


Red Roar Rising

by Wynn



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Awkward Flirting, Canon-Typical Violence, Developing Relationship, Drama & Romance, Friendship, Humor, Insecure Lance (Voltron), Keith (Voltron) is Bad at Feelings, Lance (Voltron) is a Mess, Lance (Voltron)-centric, Lance and Keith actually talk, M/M, Oblivious Lance (Voltron), Pining Keith (Voltron), Pining Lance (Voltron), Post-Season/Series 05, Reunions
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-27
Updated: 2018-07-23
Packaged: 2019-05-14 13:41:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 25,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14770685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wynn/pseuds/Wynn
Summary: This was not what Lance had expected, not in any way, shape, or form. Granted, he had been honest when he told Keith that he hadn’t thought beyondTalk to Keith, he’ll helpbefore coming here. ExactlyhowKeith would help never became more than a vague notion in Lance’s mind. But if Lance had imagined something, he knew he never would have imagined something likethis, him stuck in a sentient space lion with Keith and hismother, neither of whom had spoken a single word for the past hour.*Desperate to talk to someone about Shiro's odd behavior, Lance pulls a Keith and impulsively goes awol from Voltron, flying to the Blade's base to get Keith's opinion. If only he could stop havingthoughtsabout Keith's hair and eyes and general existence. Hunger of the pine, population 1: Lance McClain.





	1. Part One

**Author's Note:**

> If some of you are reading this wondering where the next chapter of "Sixty Impossible Things" is, the short answer is I got really sick in March and didn't write anything for an entire month. I quailed at jumping back into writing AND writing the most important chapter of that story, so I decided to jump back into writing first with this, which has, of course, sprawled into a 20,000 word behemoth. 
> 
> So my brain stalled in creating a name for a fictional alien civilization for the non-Galran part of Krolia and Keith’s heritage (because Krolia seems to be part-Galra), so I stole it from one of my newest obsessions. Also, I know others like Hunk and Allura have commented on Shiro’s strange behavior (in addition to Lance and Shiro himself talking about it), but I wanted to write about Lance coming into his own and trusting himself, so he’s in a place of great doubt at the start of the story, particularly about his perceptions of others- Shiro, the team, and Keith.

Red Roar Rising  
Part One

-

 _Little ghost, you’re listening_  
_Unlike most you don’t miss a thing_  
_You see the truth_  
_I walk the hall invisibly_  
_I climb the walls, no one sees me_  
_No one but you._  
_You’ve always loved the strange birds_  
_Now I want to fly into your world_  
_I want to be heard_  
\- “Strange Birds” by Birdy

-

Never, in all of Lance’s relatively short yet undeniably colorful existence, had he so desperately desired a normal door. Usually, he cherished the sliding doors of the castleship. They made an awesome _swoosh_ sound when they opened and closed. They allowed him to carry an extra bowl of food goo back to his room when the midnight munchies hit. More importantly, they enabled him a quick exit when the alarms blared and the call to Voltron sounded. And yet right now, right as he stomped through them, Lance hated the sliding doors with every fiber of his being because they denied him the petty pleasure that slamming a door provided, the absolute smallest release of the rage that roiled within him.

So instead of the much desired bang, Lance’s doors closed behind him with a decidedly less than awesome whimper, which only served to increase his irritation even more. Whipping off his coat, he hurled it across the room then searched for something else, _anything_ else, to smash into tiny bits, but as suddenly as the rage had set upon him, it vanished, leaving Lance listing and lost and heavy with exhaustion.

Sighing, he shuffled forward and flopped face first onto his bed. He shouldn’t let it get to him. Shiro was clearly struggling with _something_ , and something heavy at that. He never would have spoken to Lance about it if he _weren’t_ dealing with something serious. So Lance knew that a little understanding was needed. A little forgiveness. Everybody snapped under pressure. Even Shiro. Everybody said things that were hurtful or dismissive every once and awhile. And sometimes more than that. Sometimes _every_ time that someone opened their mouth and offered a simple _suggestion_ , the _smallest_ of opinions about what the team should do and how they should do it, sometimes even when someone dared to _breathe_ and just occupy _space_ in the castleship even though they weren’t a genius or an alien or anyone remotely capable of anything _at all_.

Groaning, Lance flipped over onto his back and tried his best to breathe. He needed to be calm. He needed to be steady. He needed… someone to talk to. Just someone who would listen, who could tell him the truth, whether there was something wrong with Shiro or if Lance was just crazy or stupid or something in between. But there was no one. All Allura cared about now was Altean alchemy and Lotor, and all Coran cared about now was how Allura only seemed to care about Altean alchemy and Lotor. Pidge thought that Lance was too dumb to function, let alone someone worthy of listening to, and Hunk… Before he would have listened. Before Team Punk. Maybe he still would now if Lance could pry him away from whatever genius creation that he and Pidge were working on. But even if he could, even if Hunk listened, he wouldn’t _do_ anything, not against Shiro. Yet something needed to be done. Someone needed to do something. Either Lance did, or he needed someone who would. Someone like- Someone like-

Keith.

Someone like Keith.

The thought knocked the breath from Lance’s lungs. It sent his gasp bounding and rebounding in the stillness of his room.

He needed Keith.

Keith would listen to him. He’d listened before, both in and out of battle. He’d listen again and he’d _do_ something if something needed to be done. Because that’s what Keith did. He did things, all the crazy, dangerous things, he did them, things like declaring that their trusty, steadfast leader suffered from space dementia or that he had been taken over by one of those nasty brain worms that had nearly driven Coran insane. Keith would do it. If he were here. He’d listen and he’d do because that’s what Keith did.

But he wasn’t here, and he hadn’t been for a long time.

Sighing again, Lance rolled over and faced the wall. How long had Keith been with the Blades? At least as long as he’d been with Voltron. Maybe longer by this point, and that thought, the thought that Lance had been out here in space _without_ Keith longer than he’d been here _with_ Keith, made his guts churn, made him curl up and close his eyes. He couldn’t begrudge Keith leaving. He _couldn’t_. He knew that Keith was trying to do what he had thought was best, both for himself and for the team. He knew that Keith thought the team was in better hands with Shiro as the leader, and so had Lance then, but now… 

Now they weren’t.

The certainty of the thought forced Lance’s eyes open. He stared at the wall, the thought, like his gasp before, bounding and rebounding in his head. They weren’t better off. How could they be? Voltron was at the beck and call of the Galran Empire, or at least Black was, and as much as Lotor claimed to want peace, he was a smooth-talking skeezebag. How much could they trust him? All they really knew about him was that he had hated Zarkon as much as everyone else in the galaxy, but hating Zarkon didn’t mean that Lotor wasn’t a grade-A psycho who’d murder the entire universe if it meant that he got what he wanted.

The throne. Voltron. Allura.

Sighing for a third time, Lance flopped back onto his back. Maybe he was just jealous. Pidge certainly thought so, and she was the smartest person that he knew. Maybe all this, hating Lotor, hating that Voltron was tied to Lotor, a decision made by Shiro, who kept deciding things that furthered the ties between Voltron and the Galran Empire, maybe all this was due to simple jealousy, to the fact that Allura liked the purple people eater more than she liked Lance. Logic dictated yes. Yes, he was jealous. He had had an obvious crush on Allura from the start, one that she just as obviously did not return. But beneath the logic wiggled something else, something that evaded the cool grip of rationality with all the quick-footed grace of Red.

Or of Keith.

It didn’t _feel_ like jealousy.

But how trustworthy was a feeling? Especially _his_ feeling.

But why was Lance the Red Paladin if he wasn’t supposed to trust his feelings, his _instincts_? Isn’t that what Allura had said of Keith at the start, what had made him such a good match for Red? They both relied on instinct. Was Lance starting to as well? Was that why his bayard had become a sword, the weapon of choice for both Keith and Allura’s father? 

But if that was the case, then why didn’t Shiro trust him? Was it Lance, or was it Shiro? No one else seemed to question Shiro, or distrust him, so it must be Lance, it had to be, what else could it be, but it didn’t _feel_ like Lance, it felt like Shiro, but if it was, then what could Lance do? He had no one to talk to, no one who would listen to him, not anymore, not here-

The roar rang through the castle, loud enough to rumble through the walls, the floor, to echo in Lance’s bed, his gut, his soul.

Red.

Lance sat up. He stared at the door, his heart pounding, the roar, like his gasp and his thought, bounding and rebounding through the ship. Before the first faded into silence, Red roared again and without another second’s hesitation, Lance scrambled off the bed and out of his room, not even bothering for his jacket, just running, just racing down the hall, for Red and for-

“Lance?”

Lance blew past Hunk, who stood in the hall to the kitchen. He continued on, rounding the next hall as Red roared again, or maybe that was the blood rushing through Lance’s body, his heart hammering in his chest from the sprint, from the daring of _this_ , of what Lance already knew Red wanted him to do, from what _he_ wanted to do, from how very _Keith_ this all was.

Red roared again. Heart pounding, Lance ran fast, fast, faster.

He encountered no one else on his way to the hangar, but a communication light blinked at him as he charged up the ramp into Red’s control room. Ignoring it, he focused on getting Red fully operational for the flight. Red rumbled beneath him, around him, restless and ready, encouraging him and, he thought, comforting, perhaps sensing the nervous thrill that zipped up his spine, that made him breathless and sweaty. Wiping his hands on his jeans, Lance sat in the pilot’s seat then swung Red around toward the end of the hangar. 

“Ready, gorgeous?”

The question barely left his mouth before Red blasted down the hangar and out of the ship. The dark greeted them then engulfed them, Lance firing all thrusters to shoot away from the ship as fast as Red could take them. Within seconds, they were out of visual range, and only then did he answer the communication hail.

Allura’s voice rang through Red, taut with worry. “Lance! _Lance!_ What is going on? Has Red sensed something?”

The lie came smooth and easy. “Nah. Kitten’s just restless. We’ll be back in a jiffy.”

“Lance-”

Lance killed the comm, brought up navigation. He remembered the system in which the Blades’ headquarters resided, remembered the perilous approach, and nearly quailed, but Keith wouldn’t quail, for good or for ill, he’d persist, unless he had someone there to temper him, but now Lance was in Red and Keith was with the Blades, the most sober minded of their allies, so the world was already topsy-turvy, it had been since Lance had first spotted that mullet through Pidge’s binoculars and sped down the bluff into destiny, and now, body fizzy, both rocking and rolling, Lance leaned back in his chair and grinned.

“Six hours? How ‘bout we do it in four?”

*

Four hours later, clad in his paladin armor, Lance approached the Blade of Marmora base. He’d ridden the rollercoaster of emotions the past four hours, the manic intensity of his escape giving way to doubt so strong that he’d reached for the controls to turn back, only for that to give way as each and every odd thing that had happened since Shiro returned flashed through his mind. He wasn’t crazy. He _wasn’t_. Or maybe he was, but not about that, not about Shiro. Maybe he was for thinking that the Blades would let him in, that they’d actually listen to him, because who was he? The right hand of Voltron, but that didn’t mean that anyone actually viewed him as the second in command, as someone worthy of respect or being listened to. Lance was a rogue paladin, without Shiro, without Allura, with only his hope that his previous dealings with the Blades, that his defense of them and respect for them, would let him through.

Fate denied him further time to worry as he received an answer to his hailing call. On the screen that popped up before him, Lance saw Kolivan, frowning as he took in Lance in return.

“Paladin Lance, what has happened?”

“Nothing. Well, I don’t know. It’s maybe something. I don’t know. Which is why- it’s why I need to talk to Keith.”

Kolivan said nothing. He merely stared.

Lance resisted the urge to squirm in his seat. He, however, could not restrain the urge to open his mouth and start babbling. “It’s about Shiro. You know- well, I don’t know if you know, but Keith and Shiro are close, and he- Keith- he can tell me if I’m crazy or if, you know, it’s something, so I just- I need to talk to him. Please,” he added after a beat.

At that, Kolivan narrowed his eyes. “This was not something you could discuss over a comm?”

Lance shook his head. 

Kolivan stared, silent once more. Lance again resisted the urge to squirm and tried instead to project an air of calm, of confidence, of sanity and rationality, or at least of sincere desperation. After a few more seconds, Kolivan ceased narrowing his eyes and said, “Does your lion still retain the navigational course to the base?”

Breath caught in his chest, bubbled up with hope, Lance nodded.

“Then approach. Keith and I will meet you in the hangar.”

*

As the lift finished its descent into the Blades’ headquarters, Lance removed his helmet and ran through everything he needed to tell Keith. Lotor and the bayard. The Black Lion and Voltron and the Galran Empire. Naxzela and Olkarion and the astral plane. No motivational speeches and a whole lot more yelling and Shiro’s own admission that he wasn’t himself, that he felt confused. In the face of all that, Keith had to believe. Even coming from Lance, he had to believe. Right? He had to. He had to.

Lance repeated the last as he drew in a deep breath and waited for the door to slide open.

When it did, all thought ceased for, in the distance, mullet as recognizable as ever, stood Keith.

The rollercoaster returned, pitching Lance right over the precipice, sending him into a free fall so fierce and fast he felt dizzy though he stood completely still. Had Keith gotten taller? Or was that a trick of the Blade suit? His hair was longer, less mullet and more shag, shining space sable and curling and- God. Oh god. The breath snagged in Lance’s chest. Was this relief he was feeling? Or was it nerves? But why would he be nervous? He’d spoken to Keith hundreds of times before. Maybe thousands. He wouldn’t be nervous. He _shouldn’t_ be nervous. And yet… And yet, Lance tried to move, he tried to breathe, he tried to do anything other than stare, but he couldn’t and then Keith _smiled_ and oh god-

“Is that a tattoo?” 

The purple swoop succeeded where the rest of Keith had not, pulling Lance away from the lift and across the hangar to where Keith and Kolivan stood. Stopping before Keith, Lance twisted his head down and blatantly stared. He couldn’t stop himself, the swoop so unexpected and elegant, ending in a wicked sharp point beneath Keith’s eye.

“It’s not a tattoo,” Keith muttered as he averted his gaze. The back of his neck where the swoop disappeared flushed a delicate red. “It’s an Amestrian mark of maturation.”

Lance glanced up at Keith. “Amestrian?”

Keith nodded. His eyes slid back to Lance, but only briefly. “My mother. She’s half Galran, half Amestrian.” 

Lance blinked at Keith as the revelation processed. “Your mother?”

Keith nodded. “Her name’s Krolia. She’s still working for the Blade. I met her on a mission.”

The revelation galvanized Lance from his stupor. He reached for Keith, grin unfolding across his face as he clasped Keith’s shoulder. “You met her?! Holy shit, dude. That’s amazing!”

Keith looked up at him again, his mouth now quirked in a small smile. “Yeah. She’s here, if you want to meet her.”

At that, Lance went absolutely still. “You want me to meet your mother?”

“Of course. Unless-” Keith paused, his brows creasing in a frown. “You don’t have to-”

“No, no. No no no. I do. Of course I do,” Lance said. He dialed his grin to beaming, his surprise to nil. Not everyone treated meeting the family the same way he would. Friends met each other’s families all the time. He’d met Hunk’s, he’d met Pidge’s. Now he’d meet Keith’s. That was all. That was _all_. Why was he thinking otherwise? Tilting his head in what he hoped was a rakish angle, he continued, “Who wouldn’t want to meet Mama Mullet?”

The quip made Keith sigh. The sigh settled and unsettled something within Lance. He tensed and his hand tightened on Keith’s shoulder, which made him realize that he was still touching Keith’s shoulder, that he had been the last minute, that Keith had let him, that it hadn’t discomfited him, that it had felt- 

Swallowing hard, Lance retracted his hand. He tried to play the motion as natural, as necessary, shifting his grip on his helmet, but few things in Lance’s life ever weny according to his plans, so instead he fumbled his helmet and nearly dropped it.

As he regained his grip, Kolivan spoke. “We should hear what Lance has to say first. After, he can meet Krolia.”

Lance looked up in time to see Keith’s frown deepen. “Right. Of course.” He drew in a breath, and Lance could see the change in Keith, the weight of the moment settling on him and flattening his mouth. “What’s going on?”

Lance blinked, opened his mouth, blinked again, glanced at Kolivan, who stared at him as Keith stared, expectant, waiting for his response. Closing his mouth, Lance swallowed and searched for the nicest way to tell Kolivan that this wasn’t any of his business without Kolivan shanking him for his refusal.

“I,” Lance began. His eyes darted between Kolivan and Keith, snagging on Keith as Keith tilted his head to the side, the expectancy in his gaze shifted to concern. Drawing in a breath, Lance looked at Kolivan and said, “I’m sorry, but I came to talk to Keith, not the Blades. At least not yet. It’s a Voltron matter.”

Keith’s eyes went wide, but Kolivan remained motionless, holding his stare. Lance tried his best to hold it too. He was a paladin of Voltron. He was its second in command. He’d fought and he’d fought and he’d fought, against monsters and murderers. He’d nearly died, so many times he’d nearly died, but he hadn’t. He’d lived. If he could do all that, he could do this too. Lance could square up with Kolivan and not pee his pants in soul-shaking terror.

Another ten seconds passed. Then Kolivan nodded. “Very well.” He shifted his focus from Lance to Keith. “I leave the matter in your hands and will inform Ilun that you will not attend training today.” 

Shaking off his shock, Keith nodded at Kolivan, who retreated without another word, heading for and then disappearing through a door at the far end of the hangar. The door closed behind him with a faint hiss, leaving Lance and Keith alone. They turned to each other, looked at each other. The silence stretched between them, Lance without a clue of what to say or do now. Should they talk here, or somewhere more private? Did they have lounges here, common rooms where all the Blades could gather and hang out together? Did they have _rooms_ , personal spaces that belonged solely to them? Lance couldn’t imagine any of the Blades with a bedroom, with posters on the wall or trinkets strewn about. But Keith wasn’t a member of the Blades. Or not just. He was a paladin of Voltron too, he had a room on the castleship, but his room there had been empty, devoid of anything personal, like he never- 

“Come on.”

The comment jerked Lance from his thoughts. He found Keith striding past him, one hand lifting toward his face. A second later, Keith’s mask materialized and Lance understood. Where could two paladins of Voltron talk about a Voltron matter when surrounded by members of the Blade in the Blade of Marmora base?

*

Silence engulfed them, at least outwardly, as they stood in Red’s cockpit. Inwardly, a maelstrom at the back of his mind, Lance felt Red’s howling relief, his fierce joy, at having Keith back once again. Looking away, Lance removed his helmet. Like a splinter, like lemon juice in a paper cut, jealousy pricked at him. Of course Red preferred Keith. Black had. And Blue shut him out for Allura. Lance only had a lion because Keith had left. He wasn’t _really_ the second in command, wasn’t an integral part of the team, wasn’t needed, wasn’t wanted, was a burden, a yoke, a drain-

The poisonous spiral withered as Keith deactivated his mask. Two minutes maybe since they had left the hangar, yet the sight sucker punched Lance and he knew that the howling relief and the fierce joy was from Red, but also from-

Lance ducked his head. Heart racing, he removed his helmet. He stared at the floor and tried his best to breathe, but then Keith moved and Lance chased the receding tide, his eyes lifting and following Keith. He watched Keith walk forward, watched him look around, watched the play of emotions across his face. Had Keith always been this expressive? Had he always been this easy to read, or had Lance just missed it? If he had, he wasn’t now, the ache showing crystal clear on Keith’s face, in the way that his hand reached out and hovered over, but not touching, the pilot’s chair.

Before Lance could even contemplate whether or not he should say something, Keith retracted his hand and turned. His expression had nearly been wiped clean, but the ache still showed in the tension around Keith’s eyes, in the stiff set of his shoulders as he crossed his arms over his chest and looked at Lance. “So,” he said, and his voice was gruff, a scrape of gravel on stone, “what’s going on?”

At the question, all of his carefully rehearsed explanations fled Lance’s mind. He stared at Keith, silent and floundering, yet Keith didn’t roll his eyes, he didn’t huff in irritation, he waited as he’d waited before, what felt like a lifetime ago now, when Lance had come to him after Shiro’s return to talk about the team, its five lions and six paladins. The steady attention settled Lance, enough for him to draw in a breath and say, “It’s about Shiro.”

He told Keith everything, all that had happened, all that had been weighing on him, what no one else seemed to see or consider as strange or significant. First Olkarion and the astral plane and Shiro’s comments after, then Lotor and the Black bayard and the Black lion and cozying up to the Empire. And Lance tried to stay focused on that, on the most concrete and objective facts, what was most relevant, most persuasive to Keith, but the rest spilled forth too, Shiro snapping at Lance and dismissing him, Team Punk and sometimes Matt, Allura and Lotor and this weird new quest they had for Altean alchemy, and Lance alone, always alone-

He stopped, both in motion and in explanation. His hand shook as he raised it to first his face and then his hair, drawing his fingers back through it as he tried to slow his breathing and collect the remaining shards of his dignity, strewn about Red as he ripped his chest open and spewed all of his issues forth, more than he needed and more than Keith likely wanted to hear. His eyes darted to Keith at that thought, flicking away, down to the floor, a moment later at the focused way that Keith stared at him, at the faint frown between his brows. Lowering his hand, Lance shrugged and said, “I don’t know. I- Things have been different. Since you left.”

The little catch of Keith’s breath likely would have gone unheard in other circumstances, but in the absolute silence in Red, it sounded hurricane loud to Lance. He glanced up again and found Keith staring at him with wide eyes. Face heating, Lance looked away, back down to the floor as he said, “I don’t know. Maybe I’m crazy. I-”

“You’re not.”

At that, Lance jerked his head back up to look at Keith.

And now Keith shrugged. Now he averted his gaze. “It’s not just you,” he said a moment later. “The Blade’s wondered about most of that too. Especially after Kral Zera.” He paused, his eyes flitting back to Lance. “I was there. The Blade was there. At Kral Zera.”

“You were?”

Keith nodded. “We had gone to destroy the flame. And I saw Black there.” He paused again as another frown creased his brow. “I thought that you- all of you- were there to destroy it too.”

Lance shook his head. “No. None of us wanted to bring Voltron there. We were forced to when Shiro went off on his own. And like, I get it,” Lance continued, the chocks back off the wheels and his mind rapidly spiraling up to full rant again. “I get what Shiro said before he left. Out of all the possible assholes to follow Zarkon, Lotor’s the least evil. But that doesn’t mean he’s _good_. Least evil isn’t good. _He_ isn’t good. He’s… I don’t know,” Lance said, stamping his foot on the ground as the urge to dropkick Lotor swelled within him. “Maybe he’s telling the truth. Maybe he really wants to make the Galran Empire good and not, you know, subjugate billions under his smarmy rule. But he’s so- he’s so-” 

Lance lifted his hands to his face again and drug them down his cheeks, his irritation temporarily overruling his carefully crafted skincare routine. Jerking them down a second later, he pitched his voice Lotor low and bitched, “Princess, I swear on my pretty white hair that I want to bring noble peace to the galaxy with you, never mind how I tried to kill you on Thayserix and stole your fancy comet that you went to another freaking _dimension_ to get, and never mind the fact that I only joined up with you because literally _everyone else_ I know in the entire universe wants to kill me, including my own father, but let’s frolic hand in hand through the juniberry fields as we go on our secret adventure to investigate our glorious Altean ancestry and lord our fancy new glow marks over all the other _peasants_ in the galaxy.”

The last rang through Red, echoing alongside Lance’s heavy breathing. As the sound faded and silence returned, a lick of embarrassment slithered into Lance. He chanced a glance at Keith and found him staring back with both brows lifted. Unable to restrain the sigh, Lance dipped his head and said, “Sorry, I just…” He shook his head and sighed again, giving in to the inevitable. “Pidge thinks I’m jealous.”

“Of Lotor and Allura?”

Lance nodded.

Keith said nothing to that, not for a few moments. Then, quietly, “Are you?”

Was he? _Yes_ pushed at his brain, his lips, but his brain wouldn’t think it and his lips wouldn’t say it. Lance stared at the floor, thinking, reviewing, analyzing, surmising. Time slipped by and then, as quietly as Keith had asked the question, Lance said, “I don’t think so. I mean, I’m not denying that I liked Allura. Because I did. Obviously. Really obviously,” he continued with half a laugh, recalling exactly how obvious he’d been with his crush since first meeting Allura. That felt like a lifetime ago, _two_ lifetimes ago. So much had happened since then. So many things had changed. 

Including him.

“I think it’s changed though,” he said aloud, resisting, for some reason, the urge to look at Keith. “How I feel about her, I mean. I mean, I care about her, obviously, but not in the same way.” He paused as a soft smile stole across his face. “I think we’re actually friends now. She even helped me with-” He stopped, realization sweeping across him like a lightning bolt. Keith didn’t know. No one knew, except for Allura. Straightening his shoulders, Lance called for his bayard and said, “Hey, check this out!”

Bayard in hand, Lance activated the broadsword, holding it out to Keith with a bright smile on his face. “Isn’t this cool?”

Keith came closer, his gaze fixed on the sword. He lifted a hand and reached out, but like before with the chair, he stopped himself from touching it, keeping his hand instead hovering just a few inches away. “Your bayard changed again?”

“Yep. I was training not too long ago, and- I know,” he said as Keith arched a brow at him. “Me. Training. Shocker of shocks. But I was. I was trying to do some sighting drills with my sniper rifle, but I was just getting hammered by the drones and then boom! Fancy sword!” He looked at his sword, unable to contain his grin. “Allura said it’s an ancient Altean broadsword, like the one that her dad used.”

“Oh,” Keith said a beat later. “That’s- That’s really cool.”

Lance nodded and deactivated his bayard. “It is. I’m still not very good with it though. Hey!” he said as the thought struck him. “Do you think you could give me some pointers?”

Keith blinked at him, once and then again. “Me?”

“Well, yeah. You’re the best fighter I know with swords.”

To that, Keith said nothing. He just gawked, his eyes wide and mouth slack with shock.

Lance felt his face heat as the stare persisted. Ducking his head, he tried, but failed, to resist the urge to squirm. “You don’t have to, of course. And it doesn’t have to be now. I mean, there’s all this stuff with Shiro. And then your Blade duties. And your mom. I don’t want to get in the way of you bonding with her.”

“You wouldn’t.”

Lance lifted his head. Keith stared at him still, but the shock was gone. The usual seriousness had returned to his gaze, but something else was there too, something Lance couldn’t quite parce but that pinned him in place and knocked the breath from his chest. He said nothing though, Lance couldn’t, all words had fled him the second he locked eyes with Keith. All he could was hold the stare.

Later, he’ll marvel that it was Keith who broke first.

“So what do you want to do now?” Keith asked as he ducked his head. 

Lance blinked. He blinked a second time, still caught in the whirlwind of the last minute, of the last hour. The question, though, prompted his brain to functionality. Swallowing hard, he said, “I don’t know. I hadn’t really thought that far. ‘Talk to Keith. He can help.’ That’s about as far as my thought process went before I left.” Lance huffed out a short laugh. “I mean, I didn’t even tell anyone I was coming here. I just… left.”

Keith nodded. He didn’t lift his head though. He didn’t look at Lance, so Lance looked at him, at the dark, shaggy hair, at the lean line of his body as he hunched and ducked his head. Lance had always been aware of Keith before, much more than Keith had been of him at the start, Keith not even knowing who Lance was at first. And Lance had made him, hadn’t he? He had made Keith know. He had pushed and poked and prodded Keith until he acknowledged Lance, Lance had gotten right in Keith’s face again and again and again until Keith had looked at Lance, until he had finally _seen_ him, until-

_We are a good team._

The thought nearly made Lance gasp. He jerked his gaze away and tried to draw in a steadying breath. “So, uh, what do you think I should do?”

“I’m not sure,” Keith said slowly. “I agree with you about Lotor. He’s always had an agenda. I doubt that’s stopped now, even if he has been helping lately…” 

Lance waited for the rest, the tone of the silence indicating more, but nothing more came, Keith silent, surprisingly hesitant. He glanced back at Keith and found him staring down at the floor, his jaw clenched and hands fisted by his sides. “Keith? What is it?”

“I saved his life. On Kral Zera.”

“You did?”

Keith nodded. He kept his gaze fixed on the floor, his shoulders tight, as he explained. “I tried deactivating our bombs after seeing Black, but there were too many and I had to run. He was right there, right in front of the exit, fighting. I knocked him out of the way of the blast.”

“Oh.”

Keith nodded again. He still didn’t look at Lance.

“Well,” Lance said, scrambling for something to say, for some way to ease the tension within Keith, “I guess he did save all of us at Naxzela, so you know, equivalent exchange and all that.”

Somehow that worked. Keith exhaled and unclenched his hands and finally looked at Lance, who nodded, stupidly but again somehow successfully, Keith relaxing enough to continue. “No one in the Blades is particularly happy about Voltron being seen with the Empire.”

At that, Lance snorted. “Yeah, it’s weird as hell. We went to his command ship. A new era of peace and all that.” Lance paused to shake his head. “Allura and Shiro and Coran went off to do things, actually learn stuff, but me and Pidge and Hunk reprogrammed a sentry and made it do stupid shit.” He shrugged, embarrassment pricking at him again, at further confirmation of Lance the goofball, incapable of taking anything seriously. “I think, I don’t know, I think we were just trying to distract ourselves, make it seem not as weird, you know. Not as wrong. Like, how many of those ships have we destroyed? And we’re just standing there like everything is normal.” He paused again to huff out another short laugh. “See it’s stuff like this that makes me think I’ve gone crazy. I’m worked up over _not_ fighting with the Empire. I should be happy there’s peace, or the potential for it, but instead…” 

“It doesn’t feel right.”

Lance shook his head.

“I don’t think that sounds crazy,” Keith said after a few moments of contemplation.

“You don’t?”

“No. I probably would have felt the same if I’d been there. Or not,” Keith amended a second later. “I probably would have punched someone and started a fight.”

Lance laughed at that and Keith smiled, a small one, but enough for the last of the tension to dissipate from them both. “Yeah, probably. Or I would have goaded you instead of the sentry into jousting with me.”

Keith’s smile grew. “You jousted with a sentry on a Galran warship?”

Lance nodded. “We didn’t have horses, of course, so we stole these hover carts. And we kind of roped these two Galra soldiers who were supposed to be guarding us into being the horses. And Pidge pushed me and Hunk pushed the sentry. I totally won,” Lance added with a rakish wink.

“Right,” Keith said, drawling the word out a few syllables, turning it syrupy slow.

“I did.”

“Sure you did.”

“I _did_.”

“Uh huh.”

Lance lifted his chin. “Are you doubting me, Kogane? Are you calling me a liar?”

Keith tilted his head to the side and cocked a brow. “And if I am?”

Lance narrowed his eyes. He tried his best to keep the smile off his face. He was righteous. He was stony. He was- flirting. 

He was flirting.

With Keith.

The shock must have registered on his face for Keith straightened and moved closer, a frown now wrinkling his brow. “Lance-”

Abruptly, Lance turned away. He walked over to Red’s console and fiddled with one of the main thrusters, scrambling again for something, anything, to say. “I- I wasn’t-” Lying. Flirting. Lying. Flirting. Lying. Flirting. Lying. Flirting. Lying. Flirting. Lying. Flirting. “Shiro,” he blurted out, breathless and desperate. “He- No thoughts about him? About what I should do?”

Silence reigned behind Lance. He could feel Keith’s gaze hot on the back of his neck, searching, no doubt, for the reason for the rapid shift in both tone and focus. What would Keith think? How would he account for this? He couldn’t. Lance couldn’t let Keith account for it or think about it, or else he’d know, somehow he’d know, and that- Lance couldn’t have that, so, swallowing hard, he turned back around and tried to seem cool and suave and not at all flustered or upended by the recent revelation that he’d been flirting with Keith Kogane.

The endeavor, of course, would be a mite easier if he could actually look Keith in the eye. As it was, he stared at the sharp point of Keith’s mark and waited for Keith to respond.

He didn’t, not immediately, not for fifteen excruciating seconds, all of which he spent staring at Lance, studying him, _seeing_. Lance felt himself start to sweat. He drummed one hand against the armrest of his pilot’s chair. His right foot bounced a manic jig, striving in vain to purge some of the crackling fizz of emotion inside of him. He resisted, though, the urge to turn away or to look away, and after another few moments, Keith finally spoke.

“I think I should talk to Shiro.”

“Oh.” Lance blinked in surprise, somehow unexpecting help even though he had asked for it, had flown thousands of miles to get it. Straightening, he lifted a hand and pointed at the control panel behind him. “Do you want to use Red’s comm? Or do you want to call from the base?”

“Neither. You can hide too much over a comm. I need to talk to him in person.”

Lance lowered his hand. “Oh. Yeah. That makes sense.”

“Agreed. Give me half an hour,” Keith said as he headed for the door at the back of the cockpit, “then we can head out.”

Everything in Lance went absolutely still. “What?”

Keith stopped and turned, and something about the action, simple though it was, made the breath catch in Lance’s chest. Maybe it was the surety in Keith’s stance, or the way the light lit his face, his eyes as bright as the the lines of his suit. Either way Lance stood breathless as Keith looked at him and said, voice as sure as his stance, “I’m going back with you.”

*


	2. Part Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lance meets Krolia. It goes about as well as he expected, meaning not as he expected at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who left kudos or bookmarked and especially to everyone who was kind enough to leave a comment (and/or send me a Tumblr message) for the first part of this fic. I appreciate every bit of encouragement. 
> 
> This chapter is a bit shorter than the first, but I liked its focus and where it ended. Given my restructuring, this fic will end up being 4 parts instead of 3. Please let me know what you think. :D

Red Roar Rising  
Part Two

-

 _Is that the stars in the sky,_  
_Or is it rain falling down?_  
_Will it burn me if I touch the sun_  
_So big, so round._  
_Would I be truthful, yeah,_  
_In choosing you as the one for me?_  
_Is this love, baby,_  
_Or is it confusion?_  
\- “Love or Confusion” by Jimi Hendrix

-

Fifteen minutes after Keith had left to talk to Kolivan, Kolivan had summoned Lance, wanting to hear the events from Lance’s perspective directly. This time, Lance had kept to the facts, to what was most relevant about Shiro. He kept his personal issues tucked safely in the back of his mind, and together they’d devised a plan to get Keith back to Voltron to investigate Shiro in as natural and non-suspicious a way as possible.

They would bring his mother.

Because of course Keith would want to introduce her to the team, and of course she would want to meet the team, she was his mother and she would want to get to know him and his life, and of course Red would fly to Keith, sensing his emotions, Red had always been connected to Keith, even across long distances, even now, and of course Lance would go along with Red’s impulsive plan, everyone knew how important family was to him, even Keith’s.

Of course, for all of those _of courses_ to happen, Lance first had to meet Keith’s mother, a reality about which he was trying very hard not to panic.

Spinning on his heels, he started another revolution of Red’s cockpit. He could do this. He could do this. He was charming and upbeat. Mothers loved him. His did, and so did Hunk’s, but neither his nor Hunk’s mothers were battle hardened warriors, so maybe all that his charming and upbeat demeanor would earn would be a swift punch to the face. But Keith liked him and Keith was a battle hardened warrior, so if Keith did, and he did, right? He liked Lance. Didn’t he? He hadn’t punched Lance once, and Lance had been here over an hour. That was proof of Keith’s positive regard. Or at least his lack of hatred. And Keith had listened to Lance, too, he had believed him, enough at least to return to the castle to investigate. And he’d offered to help Lance with his sword fighting skills, and that was what friends did, they helped each other because friends liked each other, so Keith liked him. He liked Lance. He had smiled at Lance when Lance first arrived, an actual smile too, not a grimace or a teeth-baring show of aggression, but a smile, a bright one, one that lit his whole face like a star-

Lance stopped so fast he gave himself whiplash. He rewound and reviewed the last minute of his thoughts, panic sparking within him at the final few seconds. “What are you _doing_?” he asked his brain. “What- Why- This is Keith. Keeeiiiith. He of scowls and mullets. Though I guess it’s not really a mullet now,” Lance added, both his gaze and voice going distant, and somewhat soft, in contemplation. “More of a shag, all touseled and-” Lance broke off again, his pulse pounding as he processed what he just said. “Stop it,” he hissed at his brain, poking it for good measure, the pain a necessary sacrifice because this- “Is crazy,” he said, his hand flattening until it completely covered his face. “It’s crazy. This is Keith. _Keith_.”

His pulse performed another little jump as he said it, but before Lance could descened into full blown panic at _that_ turn of events, he heard steps up Red’s ramp. Whipping his hand down, he whirled toward the door and waited, trying frantically to find his chill. Below him, the lift door opened. At the sound, he started to sweat. Lance heard the door shut, he heard air fill the lift as it started to rise. He sucked in a desperate breath, trying again for some small shred of chill, but no shred came, so Lance stood, panicked and shredless and sweaty and brethless, as the door to the lift opened.

Keith stepped out first followed closely by a woman with purple skin and pointy ears. All other features though were mirror images of Keith, from the shape of her eyes to the slope of her nose and the point of her chin, even the flat line of her mouth and the way her hair flopped across her face were seen in Keith.

Dropping his small duffel bag to the ground, Keith moved into the cockpit. He glanced at Lance, but only for a moment before ducking his head. “Lance, this is Krolia.” He paused before adding in a nearly inaudible murmur, “My mother.” Turning then, he looked at Krolia and said, louder, “This is Lance. The Red Paladin of Voltron.”

Lance looked past Keith to Krolia, who met his eyes. And perhaps it was the residual panic at the strange new twist his thoughts about Keith had taken, or perhaps it was genuine excitement at the thought of meeting another member of the Voltron family, but Lance bounded across the cockpit, his hand outstretched and a smile on his face. “Hi! I’m Lance. McClain. Of Earth. Cuba, really, but no one out here would know Cuba. I mean, no one out here really knows Earth either, which is probably a good thing. No Galran invasions. Except for you, of course. Not that you invaded,” he added quickly, sweat again dotting his brow. “Just that you were there. On Earth. Which is a good thing because… Keith.” At that, both Keith and Krolia lifted their brows, and at that, panic shot through Lance as quickly as Red shot through space. Restraining his grimace, he brought his manic babbling to a close. “It is very nice to meet you, Krolia, mother of Keith.”

Krolia eyed him a few seconds before slowly extending her hand and clasping his in a firm grip. “Likewise. Keith speaks very highly of you.”

The last threw Lance for such a loop that all he could do was gape. He swung his gaze over to Keith, who, his face as red as Red himself, glared at his mother. Rather than squash the situation, though, the glare gloriously confirmed the truth of what Krolia had just said and released Lance from his all-encompassing panic.

“How highly?” Lance asked, unable and unwilling to tamp down on the grin that now formed. He turned back to Krolia and released her hand. “Like ‘Lance is an adequate paladin’ highly, or ‘Voltron couldn’t even _function_ without Lance McClain and his amazing fighting skills and even more amazing good looks’ highly?”

“The second,” she said. “Mostly.”

Keith lunged between them then. “Okay! Okay! We need to go. We have a mission.”

“Yeah,” Lance said, neatly sidestepping Keith, “and it’s called ‘Lance and Krolia become best friends as they tell each other everything they know about Keith ‘Space Samurai’ Kogane.”

Keith twisted his head to shoot Lance an absolutely murderous glare. Lance simply beamed in response. His smile grew even more as Keith flushed an even deeper shade of red. 

“Don’t you need to fly?” Keith asked as he narrowed his eyes. “So we can complete the _actual_ mission. The one you came here for.”

Lance waved a hand. “I can multitask.”

Keith’s glare intensified from murderous to imminently murdering.

“I can pilot,” Lance said instead, spinning on his heels and heading straight for the pilot’s chair. As he started Red through the ignition sequence, he heard whispers behind him, not loud enough for Lance to make out actual words, but enough to convey Keith’s testiness. A few seconds later the whispering stopped and Keith sighed, loudly, loud enough to nearly mask the footsteps that now approached Lance.

Turning, Lance found Krolia approaching the pilot’s chair. She stopped beside him and stared at him a couple beats, long enough to reignite the panic that had petered out within Lance. He held her stare as best he could, steadily if not also sweatily. The sweat increased as she spoke. “I am honored to know what I know about Keith. I wish nothing more than to continue to learn about him and his life, for him to view me as worthy of such information.” She paused then and arched a brow. “But I think you misunderstand the mission, Red Paladin. I am here to learn everything there is to know about _you_ and whether _you_ are worthy of the regard that Keith feels for you.”

In the ringing silence that followed, Lance felt what every guy felt who, in his youth, had come to pick up his sister Veronica for a date and were forced to sit before his father, a normally mild mannered man but focused and intent in those times, weighing with every second that he stared the worth and intentions of the silent and terrified young men.

Keith broke the silence, stomping toward them as he said, “That is _not_ the mission. You-”

“Okay.”

The rest of Keith’s protest died in the wake of Lance’s quiet acceptance. Lance could feel Keith gaping at him, but he didn’t turn around. He kept his gaze fixed on Krolia instead. He’d spoken on instinct, the word blurting from him before he could consciously process it, but he processed now and found, to his surprise, no regret, just the same feeling of rightness that had flowed through him as he ran through the castleship for Red.

Pulling in a breath, Lance exhaled slowly and said, “Let me get Red up and out of here and then you can ask me whatever you want.”

Keith spoke before Krolia could. “No. No, that’s not-” He stopped on the other side of the pilot’s chair and waited until Lance looked at him before he continued. “This isn’t the mission, Lance.” 

“Yes, it is. I’m asking you to trust me, for _both_ of you to trust me about Shiro. You need to know someone in order to trust them, so-”

“ _I_ know you,” Keith said. “ _I_ trust you.”

Simple words, yet the sentiment they expressed was far from simple and it upended Lance, it left him silent and breathless as he stared up at Keith. Keith held his gaze in return, and the intensity of it seared Lance, it sent his heart racing. Before he could recover, Keith looked past him to Krolia and said through gritted teeth, “If that’s not enough for you, you can stay here, and Lance and I will come up with a new plan.”

“That will not be necessary,” Krolia said swiftly. “I defer to your judgment.” 

She moved away then. Keith tracked her until she stopped, until she sat halfway down the right wall. The distance did nothing to ease the tension within Keith though. He continued to stare, as if averting his eyes would provide Krolia the chance to resume her questioning, or worse. As the seconds passed, Lance’s shock gave way to concern. He moved without thinking, reaching out and touching Keith’s hand. Keith startled at the touch and his gaze jerked back to Lance. Their stare resumed, but inverted now, Lance steady and focused and Keith wide-eyed and breathless.

“Keith-”

“We should get going,” Keith said as he averted his gaze. He didn’t step back though, not at first. Lance watched, dumbfounded, as Keith ducked his head, as his eyes darted up to Lance’s before flitting away again. Lance swore that he flushed, but Keith turned before he could determine for sure and walked over to the left wall, where he sat, leaned his head back, and closed his eyes. All Lance could do was stare, first at Keith and then at the control panel as he faced forward again, the tips of his fingers still tingling where he had touched Keith.

*

This was not what Lance had expected, not in any way, shape, or form. Granted, he had been honest when he told Keith that he hadn’t thought beyond _Talk to Keith, he’ll help_ before coming here. Exactly _how_ Keith would help never became more than a vague notion in Lance’s mind. But if Lance had imagined something, he knew he never would have imagined something like _this_ , him stuck in a sentient space lion with Keith and his mother, neither of whom had spoken a single word for the past hour.

Lance sat in his chair, his leg bouncing and bottom lip drawn between his teeth. The silence pressed in on him, a palpable thing, more oppressive than the dark, empty void of space. And it had been for the past hour. Sixty full minutes and the equivalent amount of ticks and all in silence. And there were three more hours of this, too. At least. If Lance kept Red flying at the same pace as he’d flown to the base. Which he probably should. He’d already been gone from the castle seven hours. Everyone was probably frantic, thinking he’d gotten lost or attacked or kidnapped. Lance winced at the assured dressing down he was going to get from Allura, but that pain was for future Lance to deal with. Present Lance had his own pain. The pain of silence. And sure, he’d been alone on the voyage to the Blade’s base, he’d been alone a lot lately, he’d gotten used to silence, but that silence had been because of solitude, because there had been no one else to talk to, not because of two cranky Blade members and their mysterious complicated family dynamic. And, to add to the misery, Lance was hungry and he had to pee and he had nothing to distract himself with either, leaving everything behind in the castle. He couldn’t chit-chat with Red either, that would make the situation even more awkward, Lance rambling to a robocat only he could understand while Keith and his mother silently watched, so all he could do was sit in his chair and think in utter silence as he had for the past hour and as he would for the next three, for the next one hundred and eighty-

“Okay!” Lance said as he shot up from his chair. He rounded it and stood in the space between Keith and Krolia. “Whaddya wanna know, lady? Let’s get this started.”

Keith leapt to his feet too. “Lance-”

Lance turned toward him and held up a hand. “Keith, my man, I tried very hard to respect your no talking demand. But I would rather spend the next three hours answering whatever insanely invasive but hopefully well meaning questions your mother wants to ask than to sit for another minute in this unbearable silence.”

Keith’s mouth snapped shut at that. He blinked once and then again and then he folded his arms across his chest, his shoulders hunching in prickly objection. “It’s not that bad,” he muttered after a beat.

“Yes, it is, and I’ve had a lot of practice dealing with silence lately, so when I say this is awful, I’m not just being dramatic. I’m stating truth.”

To that, Keith whipped his head back up. Realizing the implication of what he’d just said, Lance whirled around to face Krolia, who watched him with a raised brow. Plowing forward, nothing else he could do, this his chosen fate, Lance shook out his arms and shoulders like a prizefighter waiting for a bout to begin. “Okay. Let’s go. Let’s do this. I’m ready. I’m willing. I’m-”

“Rambling,” Keith said.

Carefully, very carefully, Lance closed his mouth. He blew out a breath before twisting to face Keith once more, to arch a brow and shot him his best flat stare, his best _seriously dude wtf_ look, but the look failed to quail Keith. Rather he raised his own brow and stared steadily in return. A stand off then commenced, but Lance hadn’t lived the past few months with an even pricklier Shiro-shaped pear without picking up a trick or two. Relaxing his stance, Lance wiped all traces of the _look_ from his face before softening his voice to match his expression. “Keith.”

Keith instantly tensed, eyeing Lance like he was some crazed beast, ready to pounce. “What?”

“You’re the one who said I could meet your mother if I wanted to.”

“Yeah, I know,” Keith began, but he bit off the rest. His eyes darted past Lance to look at Krolia. He yanked his gaze away after just a second, pinning it to the floor as a deep blush spread across his face.

Lance couldn’t help but gawk. Gawking provided no explanation though, so he turned to Krolia, but she was no longer looking at Lance. She instead looked at Keith, and the softness in her eyes struck Lance, it made the memory of his own mother flash through his mind. He watched Krolia stand, watched her focus on him as she said, “Keith is right. The mission takes precedence. Let’s focus on that. Perhaps you could tell me what you told Keith before. I may see events differently since I am not a member of your team.”

At that, Keith inhaled sharply. From the corners of his eyes, Lance saw him lift his head and look at Krolia, but his expression defied Lance’s understanding. Was he surprised at being considered part of team Voltron still? Or was he offended, Krolia still thinking of him as a paladin and not as one of the Blades despite how much time he’d spent with them? Lance had no time to think on the matter further, Keith nodding then and shifting his attention to Lance. Krolia did as well, and under the force of the twin stares, Lance abandoned any hope for clarity. Sighing, he looked from one grumpy Kogane to the other as he said, “Yeah. Sure. No problem.”

*

For the third time in as many hours, Lance recounted the strange chain of events that had brought him to the Blade of Marmora. Like for Kolivan, he kept mum on anything not related to Shiro, to their mission, Krolia even more intense in her focus than either Keith or Kolivan had been.

After he finished, she remained quiet a few moments, contemplating, then she asked, “Which is the first?” At their looks, she clarified, “If we can pinpoint the start of the behavior, then we can determine its reason and perhaps its solution.”

From his place on the floor between Keith and Krolia, Lance said, “Lotor and the bayard.”

“Nothing before that? No prior difficulties with the team?” 

Lance opened his mouth to respond only to close it as something popped into his mind. His gaze shifted to Keith, who narrowed his eyes in return.

“What is it?” Krolia asked.

Lance hesitated. He knew Keith would rather forget he ever led Voltron, but Lance hadn’t come all this way to keep pushing aside, forgetting, and denying things. “When Keith was in charge-”

“That doesn’t matter,” Keith said, his eyes still narrowed in a glare.

“It might.”

“It doesn’t.”

“It _does_ ,” Lance said as he lifted his chin. “It’s about Shiro and the team and what we decided to do about Lotor, which is what everything else has been about too, so that’s enough of a reason to talk about it at least.”

“I disagree.”

“Of course you do.” Barely refraining from rolling his eyes, Lance turned to Krolia and said, “So when Keith was in charge-”

“You’re wasting time.”

“Am I?” Lance asked, swinging back around to face Keith. He was primed to continue his rant, riled up by Keith and by every memory of Shiro shutting him down, but the expression he saw on Keith’s face stopped him. Keith wasn’t condescending. He was desperate, breathing hard, his hands in fists in his lap. Closing his mouth, Lance stared at Keith a few moments before saying, his tone softer, “Keith.”

At that, Keith closed his eyes. “Don’t.”

“What? Try to talk to you?”

“No. Say this is about Shiro when it isn’t. You’re pissed at him, I get that, but he was right about me. I didn’t know what I was doing, and I nearly got all of us killed. He was right to step in.”

Had he been? Lance didn’t know. Not now. He couldn’t look back at those moments without the influence of those that followed, the times that Shiro had just _decided_ without consulting the rest of the team. Or when he’d directly contradicted them. Perhaps everything had started then when Keith had been in charge, and they’d been too confused to see. “I’m not so sure now,” he said, his voice still pitched low. 

Keith turned his head away. He drew his legs up to his chest and wrapped his arms around them, hunching in on himself as he said, “Well you were then. All of you were.”

Lance straightened. “Keith-”

“What led to you being in charge of Voltron?”

Krolia’s question snapped the tension between Lance and Keith. Both turned to look at her. From the corners of his eyes, Lance saw Keith readying a scowl. “What?”

“If, as you say, you did not know what you were doing, why were you the leader and not Shiro?”

“He’d been kidnapped,” Lance said, drawing Krolia’s focus. “After we fought Zarkon. Shiro got captured by the Galra, so Keith became our Black paladin.”

Krolia leaned forward then, her eyes intent upon Lance. “How long was Shiro held captive? By whom? Which ship was he on?”

Lance blinked at the rapid fire questions. From the corners of his eyes, he saw Keith unfurl a bit to peer at his mother. “A few months. I don’t know which ship.”

“Do you?” Krolia asked Keith.

Keith shook his head. He straightened completely, his brow creased in a frown as he said, “What are you thinking?”

“From what you said, Shiro’s aid was key in Lotor defeating Zarkon as well as his challengers at Kral Zera. Perhaps he laid the groundwork for such aid with Shiro’s disappearance.”

Now Lance frowned. “You think Lotor kidnapped Shiro? And what? Struck a deal with him?”

Keith shook his head. “No. Shiro would never do that.”

“Perhaps he had no choice,” Krolia said. “One of Lotor’s generals, Narti, is part Maanasik. They are a people who possess telepathic abilities. Including mind control.”

Absolute silence reigned in Red, then Lance closed his eyes, tilted his head back, and groaned as loudly as he could, “Oh my _god_.”

“What?”

Lance ignored Keith, too caught up in his existential despair to respond. “Why is it always mind control?”

“It’s not always mind control. Stop being so dramatic.”

Lance lifted his head to glare at Keith. “It is always mind control. When you were off Blading it up, Coran had some sort of brain bug that made him go showbiz crazy. And after the wormhole? Me and Hunk and the mermaids.” Lance leaned toward Keith and raised his brows. “Giant, mind controlling space slug. And the alternate dimension, you remember, the crazy Alteans with their freaky surgical mind control. And remember when the ship went crazy from Sendak’s crystal of doom? It put the mind control whammy on Allura and almost dropkicked us into a freaking star. It’s _always_ mind control,” Lance said as he flopped back onto the floor and closed his eyes. “And now Shiro…”

“We don’t know that for certain,” Krolia said. “We need to see the situation for ourselves, to see what is truly there and not what we wish or fear to see.” She paused, long enough for Lance to open his eyes. But she wasn’t looking at him. She was looking at Keith. She held his stare a few seconds before arching a brow. “Can you do this?”

Keith merely scowled in response.

“Keith.”

“Yes, damn it, I can, so just lay off.”

Krolia didn’t, her assessment unwavering in its intensity. But she didn’t push anymore either. She nodded once before leaning her head against the wall and closing her eyes. Lance kept his eyes on Keith, watching as he clenched his jaw, as his hands tightened into fists and his nostrils flared, but the anger inside him never exploded out, Keith instead drawing in a deep breath and exhaling it slow. He followed that with another, and then another, and on this exhale, he relaxed, enough to mirror Krolia’s position, his head tilted back against the wall and his eyes closed.

Lance still watched him, far longer than he should have, Keith’s eyes closed now, but able to be opened at any moment and to catch Lance watching. But still he watched. Laid out on the floor, he watched, wondering about that last exchange and the significance of it, about what Keith had said about leading, then about the entire the journey and how Keith had behaved and how he had responded. None of this had been what Lance expected, not Krolia but not even Keith, and Lance should have known what to expect with Keith, he _knew_ Keith. But he knew himself too and he’d still acted in ways that surprised the hell out of him. 

Like flirting with Keith. 

Lance shook his head and finally turned away. Now _that_ wasn’t relevant to the mission, yet Keith had cocked his pretty little brow right back at Lance when he’d flirted with him. But then he had firmly retreated when he’d come back to Red with his mother, resisting all attempts to talk and focusing solely on the mission. Well, that was fine. Lance could do that. He could focus on the mission. He could be chill. He didn’t have a wall to lean against, but he had a floor to lay on and he had eyes to close, maybe not big indigo ones like Keith, but blue ones, and blue was a nice color, it was a beautiful color, his mother had said blue was the best color, and it was, it was the color of Earth, and of Blue, and Blue was the best lion, or the best blue one, Red was the best red lion, and both were better than an indigo lion because there was no indigo lion, even if Keith had indigo eyes, so take _that_ space samurai-

“Take what?”

Lance blinked, torn from his thoughts by Keith’s soft question. It took a second for the question to process, for him to realize he’d spoken that last out loud. Realization hit with a fiery blush, sending Lance shooting to his feet. “Nothing,” he said, turning away. “Just… got to get back to piloting.”

He retreated to his chair without another word. As soon as he was hidden from view, Lance lifted a hand and bonked it against his forehead, once and then again and then again. What the hell was that? That was the opposite of chill. That was weird. It had all been weird right from the start, from the moment Keith had seen Lance across the hangar and smiled. Keith had smiled and everything in Lance had gone weird, and it still was, Lance flirting with Keith and thinking about his eyes. But none of that mattered. Krolia had been right. Keith too. They had a mission. Lance had brought them a mission, the ‘figure out what the hell was wrong with Shiro’ mission, and they needed to focus on that. _Lance_ needed to focus on that, not on other Keith-shaped things. 

Like Keith. Or his eyes. Or his hair. Or the way he’d looked when he’d spoken about Black. Or-

Lance lowered his hand and closed his eyes. It was going to be a long flight.

*


	3. Part Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lance, Keith, and Krolia arrive at the castle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to those who were kind enough to leave comments on the last part! I am truly grateful. Thank you! And thank you to those who left kudos or bookmarked the fic, or who liked the Tumblr post about the update. :) :) :) 
> 
> As is the usual with me, individual scenes become longer than I anticipate them to be once I fully write them out, so I’ve shifted the last one I had planned for this one to the next part, likely making this a 5-part fic.

Red Roar Rising  
Part Three

-

_Realization grew on me_  
 _As quickly as it takes your hand_  
 _To warm the cool side of the pillow_  
 _I’m there for you, be there for me_  
 _I’ll hum the song the soldiers sing_  
 _As they march outside our window_  
 _Hunger of the pine_  
\- “Hunger of the Pine” by Alt-J

-

“Lance McClain! Explain yourself! Right now.”

The demand rang through Red’s hangar, loud and fierce and _pissed_. Lance nearly hesitated in his descent of the ramp, eyeing Allura and the equally fierce scowl on her face, but Lance’s momma hadn’t raised no quitter. He’d done the crime, he’d left the team for nearly ten hours without any sort of explanation, so he’d do the time, whatever it may be, whether a simple tongue lashing or a much more involved retribution, like cleaning the healing pods again or deep scrubbing all the toilets in the castle. 

Hands up, Lance made his way to the end of the ramp. “I know. I know. I was gone a long time, and I made everyone worry. I’m sorry.” He stopped before Allura and lowered his hands. Behind her, he saw the rest of the team, Coran a few feet behind Allura, Hunk and Pidge standing close together off to the left, and then, in the back, closer to the door, Shiro with his arms crossed over his chest. Swallowing hard, Lance yanked his gaze back to Allura and continued, “I should have said something, but I didn’t want to ruin the surprise.”

At that, Allura frowned. “The surprise?”

“Keith!”

Pidge’s shout echoed throughout the hangar. She rushed forward, reaching Keith as he reached the bottom of the ramp and launching herself at him. Two ticks later Hunk followed, sweeping not only Keith and Pidge up in a massive hug, but Lance too. 

“You’re back!”

“We missed you!”

“How long are you staying?”

“You are staying, right?”

“You have to stay!”

“We have so much to tell you!

“And show you!”

Amid their chatter and their hug, Lance floundered. Pidge was squished between everyone, Hunk on one side of Lance and Keith the other, and this was all Lance could focus on, the feel of Keith beside him. His shoulder pressed into Lance’s chest; his hair tickled Lance’s chin. Head spinning from the contact, Lance closed his eyes. They had been separated so long, Keith with the Blades, but before that, separate too, Keith pulling away before he’d left Voltron. When had been the last time that Lance had touched him, or vice versa? Maybe when Keith had been chosen by Black as his paladin, but Lance couldn’t remember beyond that, Keith retreating when Shiro disappeared, when he’d learned the truth of his Galran heritage too. The distance had grown and grown, and now Keith was here, right beside Lance. What would it be like if it were just him and Keith, if he hugged Keith as Pidge was hugging him now, but not like Pidge was, like-

“Hello. And who might you be?”

At Allura’s question, the hug dissolved. Lance opened his eyes. He caught Keith looking at him, just for an instant before he turned back toward Red. There was no time for Lance to try to parse the look though. Pidge and Hunk were turning too, and in the distance Lance saw Shiro drawing closer, a frown clear on his face. Glancing back over his shoulder, Lance saw Krolia descending the ramp. She stopped just a few feet away, her gaze calm as she assessed everyone. She lingered on someone, Shiro likely, before focusing on Keith, who moved to stand beside her. They stared at each other a beat, and Lance thought that he saw Krolia give Keith the faintest nod, then Keith turned and said, “Guys, this is Krolia. My mother.” 

Exuberant chaos exploded behind Lance. Hunk swept up Lance into another hug. Tears already leaked from his eyes, family just as important to Hunk as to Lance, his family big and boisterous too. Pidge sniffled beside them, still fresh from the joy of finding her father, still overjoyed at having Matt back in her life. Turning, Lance saw Allura and Coran clutching at each other; they both were beaming, understanding probably better than any of them the pain of loss, having lost their family and friends, everyone and everything they’d ever known. Looking past them, Lance saw Shiro gazing at Keith and Krolia too, his expression surprisingly soft. 

Keith led Krolia down the rest of the ramp, their bags in hand, making individual introductions as they went. Lance followed like a shadow. He held his breath when they reached Shiro, but the soft expression did not change. In fact, Shiro smiled as he held out his hand.

“It’s an honor to meet you. My name is Shiro. I’m-”

“The Black paladin. Yes. I know.” She clasped his outstretched hand then. “I am Krolia.”

They shook hands. Lance let loose his breath, but it stilled again when Shiro turned his attention to him. “How did this come about?” he asked as he released Krolia’s hand. “We checked the communication records after you left. There weren’t any logged calls from the Blade, or to them either.”

Lance moved, his body on autopilot, his mind already recalling the lie he’d worked out in the last few hours of the trip back. “It was Red.” He stopped a few feet from Shiro and continued. “He’s always had that long distance thing going on with Keith. He’s been bugging me for a while to go see him. We weren’t doing anything now, so I finally gave in and here we are!” he added, a blithe and brilliant smile on his face. 

Neither the smile nor the explanation appeased Shiro. He peered at Lance still, his gaze sharp and assessing. Lance felt the weight of it bear down on him, but before Shiro could ask another question, Coran said, “I think this calls for a feast!”

At that, the gathering descended into chaotic exuberance once more, forcing the interrogation to be put on hold. Hunk made his way over to Coran and, as they left the hangar, they debated what to serve for dinner. Pidge latched onto Keith’s side again, chattering as they trailed behind Hunk and Coran about her newest genius invention. Krolia followed, and Lance rushed to join her, not wanting to get left behind for further questions from Shiro. Krolia glanced at him as he fell into step beside her, and Lance wondered if she too felt Shiro’s gaze as they finally left the hangar.

*

“We hold this feast to honor family, those we have lost, those we have found, and those we will find in the future. For today, we honor Krolia and Keith-”

Keith gave a start beside Lance. “What?”

Allura continued as though Keith hadn’t spoken, but from the far end of the table, Lance saw her eyes, soft in feeling yet strong in will, flit to Keith. “One is new to our family, and the other has journeyed long and far but has finally returned. Both bless us with their presence, and for that, we dedicate this feast to them.”

Allura dipped her head a moment before sitting. When she did, the feast began, everyone digging in to the vast array whipped up by Hunk and Coran in the last hour. Krolia and Pidge each sat to one side of Allura, then Keith by Krolia and Shiro by Pidge, then Lance and Hunk respectively, and finally Coran at the other end of the table opposite Allura. Lance filled his plate, his hunger at desperate levels after so long spent flying, foodless, in Red. Beside him, Keith stuffed his face with a similar desperation, pausing long enough to grunt in appreciation at one of the foodstuffs.

Lance glanced at it and lit up with a smile. “I love those! They’re like a purple mango. A purple _chocolate_ mango. The Olkarions gave them to us the last time we were there.”

“‘S good,” Keith murmured around a massive bite. As he chewed, he lifted the next item from his plate, a chicken-like protein sent by the Arusians, now coated in a spice from Puig that was similar to thyme. Keith scarfed this down then reached for a bowl of plain food goo, inhaling it with the same fervent intensity as the rest. 

That pulled the smile from Lance’s face. What exactly did the Blades eat to make a simple bowl of goo so appealing? Peering past Keith, Lance saw Krolia eating at a more sedate pace. Perhaps not the food then, perhaps Keith was just extraordinarily hungry. Or perhaps he was in the throes of Galran, or Amestrian, growing pains. He had said his facial mark was one of maturation. Or perhaps he was just happy to be eating something other than what the Blades ate. For whatever reason, he ate quickly, ravenously, so much so he drew both Allura’s and Pidge’s attention. And their concern. Lance locked eyes with Pidge a moment. He saw questions spark in her brain and poise at the tip of her tongue. The last thing they needed was a ruckus about Keith’s time with the Blades, so, clearing his throat, he said to Pidge, “You should tell Keith about finding your dad.”

Keith’s head whipped up and he looked at Pidge. “You did?”

She nodded then launched into the story of his rescue. A risky topic given how, at the heart of it, was Lotor killing Zarkon with secret help from Shiro, but it helped distract Pidge, which was of higher priority. Loosing a light breath, Lance turned back to his food, or he intended to, his gaze instead snagged on Shiro, who once more stared at him. 

Pulse skittering, Lance sent him what he hoped was an easy smile before ducking his head to resume eating. At first, the food tasted like dry chunks in his dry mouth, but as the minutes passed and the conversation flowed smooth and cheerful, he relaxed. Everyone was here, or most everyone, Matt back with the rebels for a reconnaissance mission against Sendak, but the team was here and they were safe. Lance let the conversation wash over him, let it unwind him further. He listened to Allura as she asked Krolia about her time with the Blades, to Hunk and Coran as they debated whether to whip up another treat for dessert, to Pidge as she explained her latest modification to the Green Lion to Keith. Then Keith laughed, a soft huff, barely audible over the din, but enough to snatch Lance’s attention and focus it solely on him. He’d been gone for so long, and now he was here, just a few inches away, close enough for Lance to hear him laugh, for his foot to bump Lance’s as he reached for another piece of meat. Keith was here, finally, back in the castle with the team, but he wouldn’t be for long, he’d eventually leave, after they figured out what was wrong with Shiro Keith would go back to the Blades, and that thought freezes Lance, or not the thought itself, the realization that followed it, how undeniably sad the thought of Keith leaving made him.

A bump to his elbow drew him out of his thoughts. Looking up, Lance found Keith peering at him, his brows drawn together. “You okay?”

He was here. Keith was _here_. When was the last time that they’d all eaten together? When would they again?

“Lance?”

Starting, Lance sent Keith a quick nod. “Yeah. Yeah, of course. Just- A bit of food went down the wrong way.”

The explanation did nothing to lessen Keith’s frown, or the intensity of his stare. Lance blamed the length of the day for his reaction, the dozen different things that he simultaneously felt as Keith stared at him. He wanted to run from the table, he never wanted to leave, he wanted Keith to stop looking at him, he never wanted Keith to look away. And that thought spun his head, it made his hands clench on his utensils. Had he ever? He’d _always_ wanted Keith to look at him, to acknowledge him, to _see_ him, but this felt different. Or did it? Had it always felt like this and Lance had just-

“Here.”

Lance blinked, torn from his thoughts once more, this time to find Keith offering him one of the chocolate mangos. “Oh.” He looked at Keith’s plate, then at the serving tray, both of which were empty of mangos. “But that’s-”

Keith spoke over him. “Take it. I already ate one.”

“Yeah, but-” 

“You like them, right?”

“Well, yeah, but-”

“So take it.” 

Without another word, Keith plopped the mango on Lance’s plate. Lance stared at it a moment, too shocked to do anything else, before glancing back at Keith. He hunched over his plate, hair obscuring part of his face. The part Lance could see was now colored by a faint flush. And that just took the quiznacking cake. In what universe did Keith Kogane blush, and blush because of _him_ , Lance McClain? He had his answer as soon as he thought the question though, his brain dangling earlier parts of the day before him, Keith blushing when Lance bent close to examine his mark and when Lance touched his hand in Red. So this universe. In _this_ universe, this one that Lance existed in, Keith blushed because of him. 

How long he gawked at Keith, utterly flabbergasted, Lance had no clue. He returned to reality when a foot nudged his. Turning from Keith, Lance found Hunk grinning at him from across the table, a sweetly conniving grin that portended embarrassing ill. Dread sinking in, Lance watched as Hunk looked from him to Keith and back again, making a brief pitstop on the mango along the way. Hunk wagged his brows when his gaze returned to Lance, and the sinking dread seized hold of Lance’s lungs and squeezed with the strength of six Alluras. He tried as discretely as he could to kick Hunk before Hunk could make good on that portent of shame, but Hunk evaded with a grace belied by his sturdy size and said, head swiveling back to Keith, “So Keith, how long will you be staying?”

Keith jerked his head up. Lance saw his gaze flit to Shiro a beat before he said, “I- I don’t know. I mean, I’m not sure.”

Pidge, demon spawn that she was, jumped into the conversation then. “Hopefully it’ll be a while because then Lance might stop moping.”

Gasping, Lance whipped his head toward her. The ceiling lights reflected off her glasses, yet they did nothing to obscure the evil gleam in her eyes. “What- You- I have _not_ been moping.”

“Uh, yeah,” Hunk said, “you have. All you do is train when we’re not on missions. Not that that’s a bad thing,” he added when Lance looked back at him. “Not completely at least. You _have_ been kicking all kinds of ass lately.”

“W-What?”

Hunk sent Lance a look. “Come on, man. Like we haven’t noticed.”

“ _What?_ ”

“Are you sure _he’s_ noticed?” Pidge asked. “This is Lance we’re talking about.”

“Hey! Just what the hell is that supposed to mean?”

Coran leaned over then and gave Lance a friendly pat on the shoulder. “Only that you don’t give yourself enough credit for your accomplishments, my boy.”

“What? I give myself all the credit.”

“About stupid shit,” Pidge said. “But you haven’t boasted even once that you were the one who got us free from that plant beast on Olkarion.”

Lance looked back at her. “There was nothing to boast about. It was just luck that I was the one free to do it.”

“Which makes it even awesomer,” Hunk said. “It was just you. God, that thing was _huge_. Like at least the size of the castle.”

That drew not only Keith’s attention back to Lance, but Krolia’s too. Under the intensity of the twin stares, Lance felt his face start to heat. Glancing down at his plate, he stammered, “That’s not- I mean, any one of us would have, you know, if it- if the situation had been different.”

“Yes,” Allura said, and though composed, her tone also brooked no argument, rendering Lance a silent, gaping mess as she continued. “It was not anyone who inspired me on Naxzela though. If not for you and your encouragement, I would not have been able to break us through the barrier.”

Now this had to be an alternate universe. A different one from the freaky surgical Altean one, but an alternate one nonetheless. One where everyone complimented Lance and gave him chocolate mangos. One where he flirted with Keith Kogane and thought _thoughts_ about Keith’s dumb hair and even dumber eyes. One where Lance _blushed_ because Keith freaking Kogane was looking at him. And one where Keith freaking Kogane blushed because of Lance. Was he blushing still? Lance doubted it, Keith wouldn’t have lifted his head if he was still red, but the need to know, to see, to confirm was so all-consuming that Lance checked anyway. 

Keith wasn’t red anymore, but he was still looking at Lance, a little sidelong glance, as though he were assessing- No. Lance sat up straighter. He knew that look. Keith wasn’t assessing him. 

_Keith was checking him out._

The expected freak out passed Lance right by, tossing him a jaunty wave as he leaned back in his chair, body tilted towards Keith and a grin unfurling slowly across his face. “What can I say? I’m just that good.”

“Oh god.”

“Here we go.”

“Why? _Why?_ ”

“We brought this on ourselves.”

“We did. We really did.”

“You really did,” Lance said, without moving his gaze from Keith, who rolled his eyes, but who also failed in completely suppressing his smile. 

*

The rest of dinner passed in much the same manner. Lance’s fortunes ended shortly thereafter though, Allura roping him and only him into clean up duty. He owed the team, she said, for the emotional distress he put them through with his prolonged absence. Besides, Keith hadn’t been gone so long that he’d forgotten the way to his room, or to the one they had set aside for Krolia. So Lance stayed when everyone left and cleaned, his grumbling kept to a minimum as both his brain and body were worn out from the long day and its surprising twists and turns.

Such as Keith.

And how Lance felt about him.

And how he seemed to feel about Lance.

Lance shook his head as he left the kitchen. Tomorrow. He would process everything tomorrow. He’d figure out what everything meant and what, if anything, he needed to do about it. For now, he trudged through the halls, the hot shower and soft bed awaiting him nudging his tired legs on. But as he rounded the corner for the residence hall, all thoughts of a shower and bed fled him as he spotted Keith sitting on the floor by his door. He’d finally shed the Blade of Marmora suit and was back in his jeans and t-shirt and the ridiculous boots that Lance now, privately, had to admit he thought were cool. Keith looked asleep, his head tilted back against the wall and eyes closed, but tension tightened the lines of his body and his hands were in fists by his sides.

This finally pushed Lance from his stupor and down the hall. “Hey, man. You okay?”

Keith sighed in lieu of response. He opened his eyes and pushed to his feet, turning to face Lance as he approached. Up close, Lance saw more signs of tension, Keith’s jaw clenched and his lips pressed flat. It hadn’t been that long since the feast, but perhaps Keith still had the opportunity to talk to Shiro, to see some sign of strangeness, of justification for Lance’s suspicions.

Stomach churning, Lance slowed to a stop before Keith, but before he could say anything, Keith did.

“You have a mother, right?”

Lance floundered for a moment from the conversational whiplash then he managed, “Uh, yeah. Doesn’t everyone?”

Keith shot him a look. “I mean, you lived with yours. As a family.”

“Oh. Yeah, I did. At least until I started at the Garrison. Then it was, like, long distance family, phone calls and video calls and all that.”

Keith nodded, but said nothing else. His gaze skittered away, to some vague point in the distance. He looked about a second from bolting, or from yacking up his dinner, or from doing both, first yacking and then bolting. He did neither though. He just stood, silent and bug-eyed as he stared down the hall.

Slowly, so as not to spook Keith into yacking or bolting, Lance gestured toward his door. “Do you want to come inside?”

The question broke Keith from his stasis. He glanced at Lance and then at the door, suspiciously, like it was the one that had forced him to come here and sit down and wait for Lance so that he could ask about mothers without providing any sort of clarifying explanation as to _why_ he had come here to sit down and wait for Lance so that he could ask him about mothers.

Too exhausted to endure the staredown, Lance opened the door to his room and shuffled inside. Keith could follow if he wanted. Or he could continue his feud with the door, and Lance could shower and sleep and start fresh tomorrow. 

Stepping around the gaming equipment- his now, Lance playing it more than Pidge- Lance made his way to his bed and sat down with a sigh. Reaching over, he took off his shoes, but he resisted the urge to flop back and burrow into the blankets, instead glancing at the door. Keith hovered by it now, far enough inside the room for the door to swish shut behind him. He eyed Lance’s room as he had the door. This, at least, Lance understood. In all the time they had lived together in the castle, their rooms right beside each other, Keith hadn’t come by once. Of course, Lance had only been to Keith’s room once, driven to him then, as he had been today, by doubt. It was only now though, surrounded by the clutter that he’d slowly accumulated the past two years, that the emptiness of Keith’s room struck Lance. Keith had been the only one member of the team to not accumulate anything. Even Shiro had collected a couple mementos before he’d been kidnapped.

But not Keith.

The thought depressed him, for a reason Lance couldn’t quite comprehend, his brain too sluggish from the day. So he set it aside for the other equally as incomprehensible issue at hand. “So,” he said as he drew his legs up onto the bed, “did something happen between you and your mom?”

Keith’s gaze cut over to him. “What makes you say that?”

“Uh, the fact that you’re here asking me about _mothers_ the same day you introduce me to yours.” Lance paused before tilting his head to the side. “That and how tense you two were in Red. You were, like, a millisecond away from engaging in some close quarter fisticuffs.”

Keith rolled his eyes. “We were not.”

“Okay, _she_ wasn’t, but _you_ were. Which is weird because you seemed so jazzed to introduce me to her when I first got to the base. And then it was like you didn’t even want us _looking_ at each other, much less talking. What happened?”

Rather than respond, Keith looked away and shrugged. The gesture seemed less like a denial of something happening and more confusion about it, an inability to explain, so Lance stayed silent, stifling a yawn as he waited for Keith to figure out what he wanted to say. 

After about a minute, Keith did. Head tilted down toward the floor, he said, “I don’t know. She keeps trying to tell me what to do.”

“Like what?”

Keith glanced at him only to yank his gaze away a second later. “Just… different things,” he said as he crossed his arms over his chest. “But I don’t need her telling me what to do. I can figure it out for myself.” 

The gears in Lance’s brain finally started turning then. He took in Keith’s posture, his declaration of independence and mulish refusal of aid. He recalled the way that Krolia had loomed over him at the start of their journey, explaining her mission to be evaluating Lance and discovering if he was worthy of Keith’s admiration. She had immediately backed down when Keith protested her interrogation, and they way she had looked at Keith when he wasn’t looking at her, the softness in her eyes, so unexpected from a hardened battle warrior, but exactly what Lance would expect from a loving mother. 

“You can,” he said, drawing Keith’s attention back to him. “That doesn’t mean she’s not gonna try to help you. That’s what moms do. Yours might just be a little more… intense about it than some others.”

Keith stared at him a long moment, taking in what he said. Then he looked away and sighed. “I guess I can deal with that. As long as it doesn’t keep interfering with my missions.” He sighed again before pushing away from the door and finally facing Lance. “Speaking of, I couldn’t get a read on Shiro at dinner, and he said he was too tired to catch up tonight, so I’m going to talk to him tomorrow.”

Lance nodded, and Keith did too. Silence descended between them, a near tangible thing. Lance waited for Keith to leave, to retreat as he seemingly wanted to, not having budged more than a few inches from the door, but Keith didn’t. Maybe he was waiting for Lance to say something, to add to the plan or comment on Shiro’s behavior, but Lance didn’t. They looked at each other in silence instead, only to look away, only to look back a couple seconds later, only to look away again. Then Keith turned for the door, and as he did, the fear rose fast and hard in Lance that, if Keith left, if he walked through the door right then and there, Lance would never see him again. And that was crazy, Lance knew that was crazy, Keith wouldn’t leave until they knew for sure what was wrong with Shiro. But then he would leave. 

And would he ever return if he did?

“Do you…?”

The words came out on their own volition, or on Lance’s, some inclination, a need or a wish or a want, that was slowly rising in him. Keith stopped and looked back at him, and Lance couldn’t, he couldn’t look at him, his eyes and the way he tilted his head and those stupid, _stupid_ boots- it was too much, it was all too much, but it wasn’t, it _wasn’t_ , and Lance’s heart raced and his mouth went dry because it wasn’t, it wasn’t too much, it wasn’t enough. Lance glanced at Keith once more and saw him looking, he saw Keith frowning, he saw Keith _there_ , still, still he was there, and- 

“Do you want to play?” he asked, jerking a thumb at the viewing screen that he and Pidge had set up before the console. “I mean, I know it’s not the mission, but you said- you can’t talk to Shiro until tomorrow, so, you know, we could- we could just… hang. Until then. If you wanted.”

Lance gave himself props for gently lowering his hand back down to his lap rather than punching himself in the face for that godforsaken babble that just poured from his mouth. But Keith didn’t immediately run screaming from the room, or burst into hysterical laughter, so perhaps all was not lost. All was not immediately resolved though, Keith remaining quiet, so quiet Lance could hear the faint whine of air into and out of his lungs as he tried not to hyperventilate.

Then, finally, amazingly, Keith moved into the room. “I- Yeah. We can do that.”

On another day, perhaps, Lance could have played the cool, calm, and collected card. He could have been suave, even dashing. But the day had stripped him of his pretense, so he just smiled, a bright one, as he stood from the bed.

“Great! Now prepare yourself for the adventure of a lifetime!”

*


	4. Part Four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lance and Keith hang out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hadn’t meant to take this long in posting, but I had a family member pass shortly after I posted the last chapter. Finishing writing this part has been a nice distraction to say the least. This part’s a bit shorter than the rest, but hopefully you’ll still enjoy.
> 
> Thank you so much to those who commented on the last part! I appreciate every single thought, so thank you for sharing them!

Red Roar Rising  
Part Four

-

_Secrets I have held in my heart_  
 _Are harder to hide than I thought_  
 _Maybe I just wanna be yours_  
 _I wanna be yours, I wanna be yours_  
\- “I Wanna Be Yours” by Arctic Monkeys

-

If someone had asked Lance that morning what he’d be doing now, approximately fifteen hours later, he would have predicted something similar to this- a late night snack run after holing up in his room for an epic video game binge. The only difference, the key difference, the surprising difference, perhaps the important difference once Lance sat down and thought about it, was the fact that he wasn’t alone.

Keith was here with him.

They sat on the floor, their backs against the counter, as they ate the closest approximation to ice cream that Hunk could make. In contrast to dinner, when Keith ate with such blistering intensity, he took his time now, savoring each bite as thought it were his last. Perhaps it was, yet in contrast to dinner, when that thought had depressed Lance into silence, now simple proximity rendered him mute, Keith _right there_ , right beside him, as he had been all night, sitting by Lance at dinner and while they played _Killbot_ , and now, now as they ate alien ice cream, Keith sat so close that their elbows bumped as they ate.

“So,” Keith said after another minute of Lance’s silence, “you want to talk about it?”

Lance lifted a hefty scoop of ice cream to his mouth. “About what?”

“What made you go all quiet at dinner.”

Lance stilled at the comment. His ice cream hovered in the air, braced, like Lance, for whatever came next.

“You just… seemed sad,” Keith continued, his voice quiet, hesitant. “And I know there’s stuff going on, you came and got me for a reason, but it just… it seemed like a time that you should be, you know, _you_.”

The offense was instinctive, deep-seated. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Keith sighed. “Nothing. Just forget it.” He punctuated the command by hunching over his bowl and shoving another bite of ice cream into his mouth.

Silence settled again over the kitchen, but this one was decidely uncomfortable, spiky where the other had been smooth. Lowering his spoon, Lance leaned his head back against the counter and closed his eyes. Everything had been going so well. Keith had never played a video game before, much less _Killbot_ , so Lance had taught him the basics and watched as, predictably, he flourished, getting a grasp on the game’s complicated mechanics much faster than Lance had. And as Keith had played, Lance had chattered about anything and everything, the words pouring forth like a torrent of water from an opened dam. And Keith had listened, he’d listened to every dumb thing that Lance had said, and now he was offering to listen again.

Because he thought that Lance was sad.

The thought snatched the breath from Lance’s chest. His hands trembled around his bowl. Keith thought he was sad and had asked him about it. Within a day of coming back, Keith had seen him and had known and had cared enough to ask. Maybe Keith felt he had to since Lance had given him advice about his mother, maybe Keith felt that he needed to repay that favor, but if not, if he’d been genuine in his desire, if he’d actually wanted to know and to help… 

Lance had to say something.

But what could he say? He couldn’t say the truth, that he was sad about Keith leaving the team again. What kind of truth was that- _I was sad at the thought of not seeing you again_? What was that? What did that mean? Lance didn’t know, so he couldn’t say it, not when he couldn’t explain it. But then what _could_ he say? What sounded plausible? 

What about that dinner would make him sad?

The answer came after a few more seconds of contemplation. Licking his lips, Lance drew in a deep breath and said, “I was thinking about my family.” He paused as, in his periphery, he saw Keith glance at him. Guilt pricked at him for his lie, but not saying anything was worse, so after a beat, he continued. “Pidge found her dad, and Matt, and you found your mom, and I just… I started thinking about my family. And I didn’t want to, you know, rain on the happy parade, so I didn’t say anything.” 

Keith unfurled, sinking back against the counter as Lance explained. “I hope you get to see them again.”

Lance nodded. “At least they know I’m alive, so that’s good.” At Keith’s frown, Lance clarified. “Mr. Holt took back messages from me and Hunk, well from all of us, like Allura sent a formal introduction to the Garrison, and Pidge and Matt made one for their mom, and me and Hunk for our families too.”

“That’s good. I’m glad you got to do that.”

“Me too.” Lance paused again to draw in another breath, to shake off the sadness that had started to settle into him at the thought of his family. Exhaling it slow, he turned to Keith and said, “So what about you? Any tales of Blade badassery you want to share?”

Keith turned his head away. “No.”

“Oh come on. There’s got to be _something_. Oooh,” Lance said, perking up with an idea, “how’d you meet your mom? You said you met her on a mission, right?”

“I did, but it was just a mission. It wasn’t anything special.”

“I highly doubt that.”

That got Keith to look back at him again. “Why? Did Krolia say something to you?”

Lance shook his head. “No. It’s just- It’s _you_. You’re always doing something cool, like flying into asteroid fields or being a sword ninja, so-”

“Well, that didn’t happen,” Keith said as he stood. “Not this time. Sorry to disappoint you.”

The bitterness in his voice made Lance freeze. He watched Keith walk away, watched him round the counter, then heard him toss his bowl into the sink. Lance stayed in place a moment before he slowly stood, turned around, and faced Keith. He waited for Keith to look at him, and when he did, Lance lifted his brows. 

At that, Keith sagged. “I know. I know. I- The mission failed. _I_ failed,” he amended a beat later. His hands clutched the counter’s edge and he stared down into the sink, his entire body one big line of misery. “I was supposed to meet Krolia to destroy this superweapon. But I wasn’t paying enough attention when I was trying to land and crashed my ship, and then we got found before we could destroy it, and she-”

Lance waited, but Keith never finished. Quietly, so as not to disturb the spell, he asked, “What?”

If possible, Keith’s body tensed even further. He remained that a way a couple seconds before he sighed and straightened. He didn’t look at Lance though when he responded; he kept his gaze on the counter before him. “She made a deal rather than destroy the weapon. She let the weapon out so that Trugg, the commander there, wouldn’t kill me.”

“That makes sense. I mean, she is your mom.”

“But that shouldn’t matter!” Keith said as he banged his hand against the counter. “She’s one of the Blades, so she knows. She knows that the mission is what matters, that it’s the _only_ thing that matters. Not how you feel, yet she made that call based on how she felt. And she keeps doing it. She-” 

He broke off again, his body visibly trembling he was so tense. Lance waited again, debating this time about whether he should press for more. Keith hadn’t explained earlier when he’d hinted at how Krolia kept trying to tell him what to do. He likely wouldn’t explain now if Lance pressed, but the urge to say _something_ , to help in some way, was too strong for Lance to ignore. So he didn’t ignore it. He threw caution to the wind and, as he had before, leapt blindly into the crazy abyss.

“Look, I know I’ve only known your mom a day, which isn’t any time at all, and I’m not trying to argue against you, especially not about your mom, but from what you said and from what I’ve seen, it’s clear that she cares about you and that she’s trying to do right by _you_ , not the mission. And I think that’s a good thing.”

Keith finally looked at him. “Even if it means there’s this superweapon, this giant killer beast, that’s now free in the universe?”

Lance lifted his chin. “Even then. I mean, you heard Pidge at dinner. Massive killer beasts?” He shrugged then and summoned his best devil-may-care grin. “Killing them’s what I do.”

For a moment, nothing changed. Keith continued to stare, he continued to clutch at the counter, he continued to tremble and to hold himself bowstring taut. Then the whole tableau collapsed, Keith lowering his head and huffing out something like a laugh. The tension sloughed from his shoulders and he finally let go of the counter, finally eased back and looked at Lance. And even though Keith shook his head, the gesture was fond, as was the look in Keith’s eyes, and Lance couldn’t look away. He didn’t want to. _He_ did this. _He_ made Keith feel better. _He_ made Keith smile. And it was because Keith had sought him out, had come to Lance, out of everyone Keith had come to Lance to talk, and Lance hadn’t screwed it up, he hadn’t made Keith feel worse, he’d made him feel _better_ , and that thought zips through his body, it buoys him and makes him giddy.

Leaning over, he grabbed his bowl before making his way around the counter to the sink. To Keith, who watched Lance approach. Lance stopped beside him and, together, they rinsed their bowls and spoons and slotted them into the Altean dishwasher. Neither moved after. The seconds stretched out slow, and the buoyant feeling fizzled and popped within Lance. He peeked at Keith from the corners of his eyes, found him with his hands on the counter again and his head dipped down, his hair obscuring his eyes. Lance looked and he looked and he let himself look, at the way Keith’s mark curved along his cheek, at the slope of his nose and the line of his jaw, at the wild mess of his hair, and at his mouth, slack now, neither scowl nor smile gracing his face, his lips parted and faintly pink and-

Lance closed his eyes. Heart pounding, he twisted his head away and tried to wrangle his body and brain back under his control. What was that? _What was that?_ He’d been- He had been- He’d- 

He’d been checking Keith out.

He’d been happy that he made Keith happy.

He’d been sad at the thought of Keith leaving again.

He’d been sad after Keith left the first time, so sad that he’d holed himself up in his room and _moped_.

Lance opened his eyes.

Oh god. 

He-

“You’ve changed.”

Lance jerked at the comment, so lost in thought that he’d nearly forgotten Keith was there. But he was, standing right next to Lance and staring at him with one brow arched. “What?”

“You’ve changed,” Keith said again. “Not in a bad way. Just…” He trailed off, his eyes drifting from Lance as he searched for the right word.

The pause allowed Lance to collect himself, to process what Keith had first said. He’d changed. Somehow he had changed. As he waited for Keith to figure out how, Lance shot him a hopefully steady grin. “What? I’m dashing? Clever? Charming?”

Keith shook his head. “You were always that.”

What?

_What?_

What?!

“No,” Keith continued, seemingly oblivious to the verbal bomb he just lobbed into Lance’s brain. “You’re… You’re more… you.”

Lance blinked once and then again. “I’m more… me?”

“Yes.”

“O… kay.”

Keith clenched his jaw. He blew out a long breath.

Turning towards him, Lance held up his hands. “Hey, man. It’s good. It’s all good. I’m more me. I’m Lance squared. Or cubed. Or-” He paused and scrunched his face up. “Like how much more me are we talking about here? Because-”

“Lance.”

It’s just his name, five little letters, but in it, Lance heard exasperation and supplication and even fondness. The sound of it settled him, it allowed his grin to stabilize into a cheekier version of itself. Keith rolled his eyes when he spotted it, but his mouth also twitched in a hint of a smile, and that hint made the world tilt again, it made Lance feel breathless and brave.

“So you think I’m charming?” he said as he lowered his hands.

Keith went absolutely still.

“Charming _and_ dashing _and_ clever,” he continued, leaning in just a bit, unable not to, running on instinct and electricity. 

Keith shot him a narrow-eyed glare, but he flushed too and the flush that crept up his neck sent a charge zipping down Lance’s spine.

“And that, somehow, I’m even more so now than before?”

“I take it back,” Keith said. He spun on his heels and marched around Lance for the door.

Lance caught up to him just as he exited into the hallway. “Nope, nuh-uh. What’s said can’t be unsaid, dude.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Your face doesn’t make any sense.”

Keith stopped dead in the hall and turned toward Lance. “What’s wrong with my face?”

Lance stopped too, right in the proverbial shit pile. There was nothing wrong with Keith’s face, which was what was wrong with Keith’s face. But how could Lance say that? _Your face makes my heart pound like a mambo beat. Your face reminds me of the night sky above Varadero._ Lance couldn’t say that. He couldn’t say any of that. But what could he-

“Never mind.”

Lance broke out of his panic to find Keith turning to walk away. “Wait,” he said, reaching out for Keith’s arm before he was fully conscious of doing so. He nearly quailed as Keith swung around to face him again, no flustered flush softening his glare this time. Just anger and hurt and Lance’s gut churned at the sight. He needed to fix this, but no benevolent lie sprung to mind. 

He doubted one would work this time anyway. 

Lowering his hand, Lance drew in a preparatory breath and said, “I didn’t say there was anything wrong with your face. I said it didn’t make any sense. Because it doesn’t. It doesn’t and you don’t and _this_ doesn’t and I…” Lance looked away and shook his head. He’d thought that talking to Keith would make things make more sense, but the opposite had occurred. Lance felt more lost than before, unsure of what to think or how he to feel or what, if anything, he should do. He rubbed a hand across his face and let loose a soft sigh. “Maybe I have gone crazy.”

At first, Keith said nothing. Then through his fingers, Lance saw him shake his head. “You really don’t listen, do you?”

Lance lowered his hand and looked at Keith. 

Keith stared at him, his glare now gone but his gaze just as fierce. “I already told you,” he said. “You’re not crazy.”

“Yeah, you did. But that was about Shiro.”

“It was. And now it’s about this.” Keith paused. His gaze drifted from Lance, aimlessly moving around the hall as he shook his head. “None of this makes sense to me either. Not Shiro or the Blade or my mother or _you_. I mean, Kolivan told me again and again that the mission is what matters, not personal feelings, but the last mission he sent me on was to meet _my mother_. Which is pretty damn personal because he knew. He knew who she was to me, or who I was to her. All Blade members have unique weapons, so he had to have known. As soon as the blade unlocked for me, he had to have known. But he did it anyway. And she…” Keith paused again to shake his head. “I know she’s why I haven’t been sent on another mission, which is bullshit because _she_ left for the mission, she left Earth to rejoin the Blades, and now she doesn’t want me to do the same?”

He continued before Lance could respond. Turning to him, he said, “And you… You just show up out of nowhere, saying that you want my opinion even though you didn’t care about it at all before I left.”

“What? Yes, I did.”

“No, you didn’t. Or you did,” Keith amended, “but only to argue against it. And now you want my advice, you want my help, hell, you actually want me to _teach_ you how to use a sword. And this,” he added. “Tonight. You invite me into your room, to _hang out_ with you, which you never did before, and you tell me that I’m cool and that you would have saved me too, and none of that makes sense, Lance. None of it.”

“I know it doesn’t!” 

“Then explain it!”

“ _You_ explain it!” Lance said as he took a step forward. A quiet part of his brain, crouched far, far in the back, beneath sanity and rationality, whispered that he should calm down before this spun too far out of control, but the rest of Lance saw Keith talking to him, saw Keith reacting to him, and Lance dove right in. “You listened to me. You believed me. You asked me for advice. Since when does _that_ happen? And you hung out with me! You said yes to that. And at dinner you gave me a mango! A mango, Keith! What does _that_ mean? You explain that.”

Keith crossed his arms over his chest and looked away. “I don’t know.”

Lance crossed his arms too. “Well then I don’t either.” 

“Well, fine.”

“Fine.”

“Great.”

“Great.”

Keith shot him another glare. “Stop saying everything I say!”

“You stop saying everything I want to say first!”

“What- That- You-” Keith abandoned both the thought and coherent speech altogether, resorting to an inarticulate groan to release his frustration. He stared at Lance, his eyes wild and his chest heaving, for approximately six seconds before spinning on his heels and walking away.

Lance took off after him. “Hey! Where do you think you’re going? If anyone gets to walk off in a confused huff here, it’s me!”

Keith looked at him but didn’t stop. “How the hell do you figure that?”

“Because I _liked_ hanging out with your grumpy ninja ass, and I’m actually sad at the thought of not being able to do it again! How’s _that_ for confusing!”

Once more, Keith stopped dead in the hall. All the wildness, all the frustration, faded from his face, and he simply gawked, slack-jawed and wide-eyed. “You are?”

Shit. _Shit_. Abort. Abort _now._

“I, uh… should go,” Lance said. Swallowing hard, he started to slide away. “Long night. I mean day. I mean night and day. So sleep. I should do that. Now. In my, you know… Bye.”

Without another word, he turned and walked quickly down the hall. He nearly made it to the end.

Then Keith spoke.

“I liked it too. Dinner. Hanging out with you.”

The words ensnared Lance, each syllable squeezing his lungs, his heart.

“I shouldn’t have,” Keith continued. “But I did. I left, but I- I miss it. Being here. I miss…”

Keith trailed off. The silence compelled Lance to turn, to see, to seek the end of that sentence. He found it in the way Keith looked at him, his face again flushed, in the way that his hands, curled into fists by his sides, still trembled.

_I miss you._

And this, the flushed face and trembling hands, the implication hidden in the silence and Lance’s realization of it, of what it meant and might mean but might not, rendered Lance absolutely silent once again. He felt the world right itself only to immediately tilt in a different incomprehensible direction. Everything and nothing had been clarified, and caught in the paradox, all Lance could do was stare.

Into that silence, Keith spoke. “So how’s that for confusing?”

He punctuated the question with a little shrug, a helpless lost one that kickstarted Lance’s brain into functionality. Pulling in a breath, grasping at the disparate shreds of his sanity, Lance pursed his lips and nodded. “It’s pretty good. _Almost_ as confusing as my confusion, so good job there!” He gave Keith a thumb’s up then, accompanied by a slightly crazed grin. “Existential crises for all!”

As before, the moment hung fraught and tenuous. Then Keith’s lips twitched in another hint of a smile. He shook his head, but his smile didn’t fade, and he stared at Lance with that same mix as before, amusement and exasperation and the same, Lance recognized it now, fondness. His own grin fading, Lance lowered his hand, and he and Keith regarded each other, the weight of all that was said and not said and done and not done still between them. 

“So…” Lance said. “What happens now?”

Keith started forward. “I don’t know.” He drew even with Lance, who turned to continue down the hall with him. “I talk to Shiro tomorrow and then I talk to you. Beyond that, I don’t know.”

The honesty settled him, despite its uncertainty. Lance didn’t know, he didn’t know about Shiro or Keith or even himself, but Keith didn’t know either. Tomorrow, though, they would start to figure it out.

Together.

*


	5. Part Five

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The morning after hanging out with Keith. Lance finds himself in an unexpected conversation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Despite what we learned in S6 about Krolia, I stayed with what I’d originally planned for her history. It’s not _that_ different, just a different reason for her leaving Earth that resonates more with this story because I’m really intrigued by Keith struggling with the Blade’s “the mission is what matters” philosophy (seen especially when he thinks Shiro is in danger on Kral Zera), and I’ve leaned hard into exploring that in this fic.
> 
> I’m sorry this part is so short. I’ve had a hard time writing lately. There are two more chapters planned after this one- the next, where shit goes down, and a final concluding chapter.
> 
> Thank you to those who commented on the last part, and who’ve just read and left comments on earlier parts too! Each comment means the world to me and has bolstered my spirits during this kind of wretched time. So thank you!!! I intend to respond to them tonight. :) :) :)

Red Roar Rising  
Part Five

-

_Seek me out_  
 _Look at, look at, look at me_  
 _I’m all the fishes in the sea_  
 _Wake me up_  
 _Give me, give me, give me what you got_  
 _In your mind, in the middle of the night_  
 _Maybe you let me look out for you_  
 _Protect what I found in you_  
 _And never let it starve_  
 _Then that way, you let me stay_  
 _Skirtin’ the skirt like I want to_  
 _And I will try hard to hold onto you with open arms_  
\- “Daredevil” by Fiona Apple

-

Since he first spotted Blue hidden in that underground cave on Earth, Lance had come to expect the unexpected. Especially since his life now was nothing like he thought it would be. He was no longer living on Earth, he was friends with actual aliens, he was a soldier in an intergalactic war, and he regularly piloted a sentient space lion with which he had a psychic bond. 

But this, he felt, took the quiznacking unexpected cake.

“And here,” he said to Krolia as they stepped out of the lift, “is the pool.”

Even now, almost an hour into the tour, his brain could barely process this turn of events. He was by himself with Keith’s _mother_. At her request. She had shown up at his room and asked him to show her the castleship, and still too sleep deprived from the day before, especially the last hour of it and the subsequent three that he’d spent in bed just _thinking_ about everything, Lance had not been able to think of a way to say no. 

He could only hope that Keith’s wrath at Lance talking to his mother would fall on Krolia instead of him since she was the one who had requested this outing.

He watched now as she gazed up at the pool. He watched and he waited, just as he had when she inspected the training room and peered around the control room and arched a brow at the lounge as though the concept of lounging defied all comprehension. He waited because, as fascinating as the castleship could be, Lance doubted that Krolia truly wanted a guided stroll around its various nooks and crannies. 

Rather, she wanted time alone to make good on her aborted interrogation.

Apparently now was the time since Krolia ceased staring up at the pool and turned toward Lance. She eyed him as she had the pool then shoulders straightening, hands clasping behind her back, she said, “May I ask you a question?” 

Lance braced himself, pulling in a deep breath before nodding.

“Why did Keith leave Voltron?”

The question threw him, Lance expecting one about himself and his qualifications, perhaps even his intentions regarding Keith. Not one about Keith. “He didn’t tell you?”

“I have not asked him. I did not think to, at least not until I met all of you. Now I feel I must.”

“Why?”

Krolia arched a brow. “Because I do not think he should have left.”

Lance drew back at that. He couldn’t not. “What?”

“Keith must return to Voltron.”

“But- But you just got him back. Don’t you want him to stay with the Blades? With _you_?” 

Krolia sent Lance a tight smile. “What I want is irrelevant. Especially when that requires me to sit idly by while my son makes the same mistake I did.”

Lance said nothing, but his heart kicked up a notch. He suspected what Krolia was about to say next, what Keith had already said last night.

She didn’t immediately clarify though, instead looking to the far end of the room. Lance watched as she clenched her jaw, as she released a slow and measured breath. Small movements, but they conveyed the emotion that spurred both her concern and her confession. 

Krolia took another moment to compose herself before she began.

“I left Earth because I felt that I needed to return to the mission. It’s the Blade way. The mission above all. Especially sentiment.” She paused then. Her hands curled into fists by her sides. “I did not know any other way. So I left, and I have regretted it every day since.” 

Lance peered at her a few seconds as he summoned the courage to ask, “Why didn’t you go back if you felt that way?”

Krolia looked at him. “I did. But the house was empty and clearly had been for some time. And I had no way of discovering what occurred, if either Keith or his father were still alive. Earth is… vast, in both size and population. I knew no one else and could not risk making myself known to the wrong person as that might have put the Blue Lion at risk. So I left again, not knowing what else to do…” 

Krolia stopped again. Lance thought he saw her bottom lip tremble before she pressed her mouth flat. She drew in a long breath that he swore shook before she unfurled her hands and turned to look at him again. “Kolivan sees the same in Keith that he saw in me prior to my return to Earth. And after Naxzela, he knows that something has to be done.”

Lance frowned at the last. “Naxzela? What about it?”

For the first time in their short acquaintance, Krolia looked surprised. “You do not know?”

“Know what?”

“What Keith did at Naxzela. Or,” she amended, “what he intended to do.”

The wording sent an iceberg of dread lurching through his gut, up his throat, where it clogged, cold and heavy. Lance tried to swallow past it, but it refused to budge.

As relentless as that iceberg, Krolia explained. “In his debrief to Kolivan, Keith revealed that none of the rebel ships could penetrate the shield that surrounded the Empire’s cruiser. So Keith chose to sacrifice himself to save the coalition. To save Voltron. He was moments from impact when Lotor arrived.”

The last bounded and rebounded in Lance’s head. _Moments from impact. Moments from impact. He was moments from impact. Keith chose-_

Lance couldn’t even finish the thought. He turned from it, from Krolia, lifting a hand to his face. It hovered there, trembling. Lance watched it, detached and distant from himself, from this time and place, from the reality of Keith choosing to sacrifice himself, of him being mere moments from death and the last thing Lance ever saying to him being _Who am I gonna make fun of?_

As through a fog, Lance heard Krolia speak. “All must be sacrificed for the mission. This is the way of the Blades. And this is why Keith must return to Voltron. He deserves more than just the mission. He deserves to live.” 

Lance nodded. It was all he could do. His hand still hovered, useless like the rest of Lance. If he had worked harder to convince Shiro to leave Naxzela before the barrier energized, they would have made it to the cruiser on time. Keith never would have had to make that decision, to face that reality. 

At least not alone. 

A touch to his shoulder shook Lance from his thoughts. Krolia stood before him now. He hadn’t realized that she’d moved, hadn’t realized that he’d started to cry until now, until he looked at her wavering before him. His hand finally finished its journey then, covering his eyes as he tried to compose himself. He felt Krolia squeeze his shoulder. The gesture helped loosen the clog in his chest, allowing Lance to breathe. He focused on that for a minute, finding the solid ground that he needed to lower his hand and look once more at Krolia. 

The determination he saw in her eyes sucker punched him, nearly stealing the breath he had just gotten back. Krolia lowered her hand from his shoulder, but Lance was still held fast, more when she drew in a short breath and said, “Kolivan spoke highly of Voltron, but always as comrades. I needed to see for myself how you interacted with Keith, and how he behaved toward you. From what I’ve seen, from you and from him and the rest of your team, Keith belongs here. Will you help me convince him to stay?”

Lance was nodding before Krolia even finished the question, her determination lighting a fire in him too. He would do it right this time. He wouldn’t just quip as Keith walked away. He would force Keith to stop and think and _talk_ like he had before when he was Keith’s right hand man. He still was, even if Shiro was the head of Voltron. Shiro could remain the head. Keith could be the-

Lance went absolutely still, spotting the destination of that thought from around the bend.

Keith could be the heart.

Because he was for Lance. 

Because Lance liked him.

He liked Keith.

The thought, finally voiced, felt both natural and momentus, the inevitable end of an unexpected path and a singular start for a new. The confusion of the last day vanished, leaving a stark clarity about the how and the why and the what concerning his interactions with Keith. Even before the last day, how Lance had felt after Keith left, because Hunk was right, he’d been moping, Lance had been absolutely, undeniably _moping_ because Keith Kogane had left the team. And before then, when Keith had been here, all the times Lance had gotten in his face, when he’d demanded attention, when he’d wanted acknowledgement. And before that… 

_I’d recognize that mullet anywhere._

“Holy shit.”

Lance was absolutely, undeniably infatuated with Keith Kogane, and always had been.

He blinked out of his revelation to find Krolia still before him, still staring at him, waiting for his answer. Lance took another few seconds to settle himself, breathing in and licking his lips, before he nodded again. “Okay. What do we do?”

Only the slightest sag of her shoulders indicated Krolia’s relief. “First we must determine why he left.”

“Well, he said it was Lotor. The Blades were working on figuring out what Lotor was doing, but Voltron wasn’t. We were doing coalition work. Helping refugees. Trying to get support however we could. Keith hated all of that. He wanted to be going after Lotor. He had from the start.”

“And yet,” Krolia said, “Keith did not return to Voltron after Lotor struck an ostensible alliance with all of you.” 

Lance opened his mouth but closed it before speaking. Krolia was right. Lance hadn’t realized it, he hadn’t even thought about it, everything too hectic after Lotor defected. But if Keith had been honest in leaving to investigate Lotor, then he should have returned when Lotor did. 

But he hadn’t.

Because, Lance understood now, that hadn’t been the real reason.

“What else did he say?” Krolia asked now.

Lance didn’t immediately respond, instead thinking back to that moment, Keith so far away from the team even then. Free from the anger that had initiated that confrontation, the memory of that distance made Lance sick. “He said- He said that Shiro could lead Voltron again. He said that was how it was supposed to be. If he was gone, then Shiro could go back to Black. Because he- Keith- was never supposed to be the leader. Shiro was, so he- Keith- he-”

“Left.”

Lance nodded. “But he didn’t have to,” he added a second later. “He could have stayed. He could have, I don’t know, done _something_. He could have-”

_Gone back to Red._

The thought flashed into Lance’s mind and with it the memory of his conversation with Keith about six paladins yet five lions. Keith had told him not to worry, to leave the math to Pidge, but he hadn’t followed his own advice, doing the math for everyone by subtracting himself from the equation. Had he decided even then to leave? Is that why he hadn’t been too concerned about the imbalance of lions and paladins? Or had that conversation tipped Keith over the edge, was it just another reason that pushed him to leave, like leading and Lotor and Black and Shiro?

“This does explain his reluctance to talk about leading Voltron on the journey here.”

The comment jerked Lance from the memory of one conversation to that of another. Keith had been reluctant to talk about it, to even _admit_ that he’d been the Black paladin. Lance hadn’t been able to dig into _why_ , not fully, not with Krolia directing the conversation back to Shiro, but now, after the last day, Lance understood. 

Swallowing against the bile rising in his throat, Lance said, “He thinks we were all against him.”

Krolia arched a brow. “He also thinks he was wrong in how he lead. That he nearly got everyone killed.”

“Okay, yeah, he did. But when he would _listen_ , when he would actually work _with_ us and not just go off on his own, everything was fine. I mean, come on! When Shiro first started leading us, we didn’t even know how to _form_ Voltron! We stacked the lions on top of each other! Like literally, we stacked them. That was how bad we were. He just- Keith never gave himself enough time. He would have gotten it. The whole leading thing. Eventually. He _did_ get it,” Lance amended a beat later. “He just…”

The thought went unfinished, the energy fueling his rant fizzling out as quickly as it had come. Lance wilted in its wake, his shoulders slumping and eyes closing. Time. No. Keith hadn’t given himself enough time, but would he want to if he felt that the entire team was against him? _Had_ they been? Lance searched his memory. On Thayserix, yes. But they should have been. Keith’s drive to follow Lotor had separated them, left them vulnerable, unable to see or fight. But later, when Lotor had been stealing the Teludav, should they have followed Keith? Then, the choice had seemed so clear, but now, with the clouds of suspicion around Shiro, his possible connection to Lotor, perhaps they had been wrong. 

What would have happened if they had supported Keith then? Would he have stayed? Or would he have still left, still abdicated Black in favor of Shiro? 

Before Lance could lose himself too much in the fog of possibility, Krolia spoke. “Perhaps if you told this to Keith, he would want to return.”

Lance blew out a long breath. “Maybe. I think the others would agree that Keith left before really giving himself a chance. Maybe we could-”

“I did not mean the team. I meant _you_. If _you_ told this to Keith, then he would likely return.”

The last hit Lance like a sucker punch, leaving him breathless. He stared, slack-jawed, waiting for the punchline, but none came. Krolia didn’t rescind her claim, or alter it, or undermine it. It remained as it was, stark in its simplicity yet heavy in its implications.

Swallowing hard, Lance shook his head. “He wouldn’t. Keith wouldn’t. He wouldn’t listen to me.”

“Why not? He has already. He is here now because he listened to you.”

Lance took a step back. His heart raced in his chest. “That’s different. I was just the messenger. I- Keith came because of Shiro, because I told him about Shiro. That’s all.”

The expected counter didn’t come, Krolia choosing to stay silent. But the pressure didn’t abate. If anything, it ratcheted up a few notches, Krolia staring at Lance with a fierceness that reminded him of Keith but that also surpassed Keith in its intensity. Lance began to sweat. He rubbed his palms on his jeans, gulped down a hasty breath. His head spun, more when Krolia narrowed her eyes at him.

“Why are you lying?” 

If the first was a sucker punch, this was a freight train, nearly knocking Lance flat. “What? I’m not lying.”

“You are.”

“I’m _not_. Why would he listen to me? I’m just the goofball. That’s all. No one listens to me. Not Pidge or Allura or Hunk, not anymore. Not Shiro. And not-”

But the name stuck in his throat, blocked by the memory of the night before, of Keith coming to his room to ask _him_ about mothers. It was blocked by the last few days, Keith listening to Lance about Shiro, believing in him enough to come here, just as Lance had hoped, because Lance had gone to him hoping that he would listen. Because he had before. When Keith led Voltron, he had listened. Eventually, but completely, to the point where Lance had gone to _him_ to talk about his feelings about the team.

So why was Lance dismissing it now?

Body trembling, Lance teetered on the edge. Then a strong hand clasped his shoulder again. He looked at Krolia. She looked nothing like his mother, no warm eyes or kind smile. Even the grip on his shoulder lacked the tenderness of his mother’s touch. Yet the strength in it was the same, a mother’s strength, as was the comfort it provided, helping to steady Lance before he tumbled and fell. 

“I will say the same to you as I did to Keith on our journey here. You need to see the situation as it is, and not as you wish or fear to see. Do not let fear guide you as it did me. For your sake. And my son’s.”

The words and the touch and the look in her eyes, a mother’s look, not as bubbly as his own, but just as heartening, just as understanding, brought tears to Lance’s eyes. He sucked in a breath and it shook, but it soothed as well, just a shade, helping to ease the tightness in his chest. Looking at Krolia, he nodded. Maybe in simple acknowledgement of what she said, but perhaps in hope that he could see truly and that he would act without fear, both for his sake and for Keith’s.

*


	6. Part Six

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lance in the training room, trying to deal with his feelings. The irony of how very Keith this was was not lost on him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some Lance introspection in this part, some of it skewed due to his insecurities. Like prior parts, I divided this one in half, so there’s two more parts to come. I’m trudging through writing, trying my best to wrangle my scattered brain.
> 
> Thank you, thank you, thank you to everyone who took the time to leave a comment on the last part! I've been struggling with writing confidence, so I appreciate the encouragement! Thank you! I hope you enjoy this part!

Red Roar Rising  
Part Six

-

 _I may be crazy and I know you’re fine_  
_Yeah, I may be crazy, yes I know you’re fine_  
_But I’ve got something that will blow your mind_  
_And I’m not going down with the rest of you_  
_Would you be my holy dove?_  
_Would you be my holy dove?_  
_‘Cause I’m not going down with the rest of you_  
\- “Holy Dove” by Civil Twilight

-

The irony was not lost on Lance how very _Keith_ this was. Emotional turmoil in your life? Head to the training room to punch a few bots. Or in Lance’s case, to shoot a few bots. He considered training with his fancy new sword, but the last thing that he needed was Keith waltzing in while he tried to use it and deciding then and there to teach him how to use it. He’d look at Lance and probably _touch_ him, or worse, Keith would take out his own sword and demonstrate proper form, and Lance would have to _watch_ it, he’d have to look at Keith move, all skillful and coordinated, like a lithe, lethal shadow, and Lance just could not do it, not now, not after his conversation with Krolia, not after the revelations it drew out.

He liked Keith.

He liked _Keith_.

Romantically.

And, it seemed, everybody on this quiznacking ship knew about it, up to and including Keith’s _mother_.

Sighing, Lance shifted his rifle, sighted, and shot a target. Krolia’s last comment buzzed about in his brain like the bots in the room, relentless and overwhelming. Afraid. She said he was afraid, too afraid to see things as they really were. Lance wanted to scoff, he wanted to dismiss the idea and laugh it off, but that was the whole issue, wasn’t it? Lance denying because he was afraid.

Jaw clenching, he took down another bot.

The first part he didn’t even have to consider. He denied things. Everybody did. It wasn’t that big of a deal. So what if he denied the fact that, on occasion, Keith did actually listen to what he had to say. Or that he couldn’t tell Keith why his face didn’t make any sense. Or why he lied and said that he’d been thinking about his family at dinner, rather than thinking about Keith. Or why he’d stopped himself from flirting with Keith on their way here. Or why he’d lied about remembering how he told Keith that they made a good team, how Keith had held him, how Keith had _looked_ at him then, how Keith looked at him when he’d woken up from the healing pod, how Lance just couldn’t deal with it, how he-

Lance went still.

Okay. So he had some fear that was stopping him from some things. 

Some Keith shaped things.

An energy bolt whizzed by Lance’s head, prompting him to action. Ducking to evade, he swept up and around and shot again, hitting the bot dead center, the movements smooth now from so much practice.

Because he’d been moping. Because Keith had been gone.

And all of a sudden Lance knew. He knew Krolia had been right. He was afraid, and now he understood why.

It wasn’t Keith. Not exactly.

It was how Lance _felt_ about Keith.

Frozen amid the bots, Lance remembered how he felt when he saw Keith across the hangar in the Blade’s base, how he’d just _stopped_ and stared, how he couldn’t do anything else. And last night as he’d looked at Keith, how he’d felt when he realized that he made Keith smile. How big those emotions had been, how overwhelming. How instinctive it was for Lance to respond to them, to push his way into Keith’s space, to flirt with him and reach for his hand and chase him down the hall.

What would happen if Lance didn’t pull back, if he took that leap and flung himself off the cliff at Keith’s feet?

Keith had left once, and Lance had retreated into the training room, into his own room, into _himself_ like a sad, lost, little turtle retreating into its shell. And that was without anything, with only the smallest steps towards something, Lance helping Keith lead and Keith helping Lance be. 

What would happen if Lance went all in and Keith left again? 

Because he would. A person didn’t have a bedroom like Keith had, as barren as barren could be, if he intended to stay. The first time something went a way Keith didn’t want, he left. He’d left Voltron and he’d left the Garrison. He had to have known the consequences of punching Iverson, it had to have been a way for him to leave a place he no longer wanted to belong. 

Lance lowered his gun. He couldn’t restrain the scoff.

And Krolia said he could convince Keith to come back. How? If Keith hadn’t stayed for Shiro, why would he stay for Lance? He wouldn’t. He _wouldn’t_. He-

“Ow.” Lance grimaced at the twinge of pain in his back from where the bot had shot him.

“I always told Keith patience yields focus, but you’re making me reconsider the idea.”

Whirling, Lance spotted Shiro standing just inside the door to the training room, his arms folded across his chest. “S-Shiro. Hey.” Lance paused and swallowed and tried not to descend into a full blown panic. “How long have you been standing there?”

“A few minutes,” Shiro said as he started across the room. “Your marksmanship is impressive.”

“Oh.” Lance glanced down at his bayard, still transformed into a gun. Even with all the oddness going on with Shiro, he couldn’t help but blush at the compliment. “Thanks.” Retracting the gun and removing his helmet, he glanced up and said, “Did you want to train? Because I can go.”

Shiro shook his head. “No. I came to talk to you.”

Lance went still. Panic reared up hard and fast within him, though he strove for outward calm.

He must not have succeeded for Shiro stopped in his approach. He stared at Lance a beat before loosing a soft sigh. “Lance…”

Lance looked away. His face again went hot, though this time in shame.

“Keith mentioned you were still upset that I yelled at you. I’m sorry. I thought we had worked it out after Oriande.”

Lance glanced at him again. He regarded Lance with such an open expression, such a caring one, such a _Shiro_ one, that the tension within Lance dissipated. “We had. But then, you know, you did again. Yesterday. So…”

Shiro blinked at him. “Oh. I- I’d forgotten.” His brow furrowed and he ducked his head. Raising a hand, he scratched the back of his head, as though the gesture could jog his memory. “I don’t- I’m sorry. Sometimes I… say things now, and I don’t…”

Lance shook his head. “It’s okay. It’s no big deal.”

“It is,” Shiro said as he looked up. “It’s why you went to get Keith. Isn’t it?”

For a few seconds, Lance didn’t say anything, wishing he could have talked to Keith before this, to learn what Keith had said to Shiro that morning. But Shiro looked so miserable that Lance gave in, loosing his own sigh as he said, “Yeah. I did. But I’m just concerned. You said you were feeling confused. And I know you’ve been under a lot of stress lately. Everyone has. I mean, Zarkon’s dead and now Lotor’s on the throne. And-”

“You don’t like Lotor very much. Do you?” 

The question derailed Lance completely. He gawked at Shiro, thrown by both the tone and the question itself. No joke revealed itself, no smirking _sike!_ or knowing gleam in Shiro’s eyes. Just direct, and almost confrontation, inquiry. “No,” Lance managed after another couple seconds. “I don’t. And I don’t understand why you do either. I know the enemy of my enemy is my friend and all that, but Lotor’s had a scheme going on since day one, and to think that he doesn’t now is-”

“What makes you think I _don’t_ think that?”

Lance’s mouth snapped shut. He watched as Shiro drew closer.

“Of course Lotor had an agenda. He wanted to end Zarkon’s reign. And he did it.”

“Yeah, and now _he’s_ on the throne. What makes us think his reign is going to be any better? He could be worse than Zarkon. He’s-”

Lance’s brain finally caught up with his mouth and forced it shut before he could talk about that particular theory regarding Lotor.

“He’s what?” Shiro asked. He stopped a few feet away, his arms still crossed as he waited for a response.

Lance hesitated, but only for a moment. He knew he had to say _something_. The thought of a lie though sat uneasy in Lance’s gut, so he drew in a breath and leapt, hoping against hope that this was the right thing to do.

“The Blade said that one of Lotor’s generals could control people’s minds. And Lotor appeared on the scene after you, you know, were captured. And since then, things have really gone his way and that’s- that’s, in part, due to you.” Lance paused then and eyed Shiro, but the steady gaze he received in return revealed nothing, no reaction to what he just said. So he continued, his voice almost steady. “Do you know whose ship you were on the last time you were taken prisoner by the Galra?” 

Shiro said nothing. He just stared.

Panic seized him fully then, digging its claws hard into Lance’s chest, but he was in too far now to back down. “I’m not saying you are,” he said quickly. “Mind controlled, I mean. But things- They’ve been off with you lately. Even _you_ said that. You said you’ve been feeling confused, and you were before too, the first time the Galra took you. After you escaped then, you didn’t- You said you couldn’t remember everything. So maybe, maybe someone, maybe Lotor, did something to you. To your mind, I mean.”

More silence. More staring, but flatter now, Shiro tightening his jaw.

“Maybe not,” Lance said as he started to sweat. “Maybe I’m just crazy. About that, I mean. The whole mind control idea. Keith thought so too. He said I was being dramatic. Which, you know, yeah. That’s what I do. But…” Lance paused again and pulled in another breath. He eased a step closer to Shiro, to outright pleading, everything teetering on the brink. “There is _something_ going on with you, man. You weren’t in the astral thing with us, not at first. And you don’t remember it, but we all do. That’s _something_. It is. Maybe it’s stress. Maybe it’s not. There’s so much weird shit out here. Mermaids. Mind controlling brain slugs. Altean alchemy. That’s basically magic, and Lotor’s obsessed with the stuff. And we’ve seen what that witch Haggar can do with it. Who knows? Maybe she and Lotor are working together. Maybe they-”

Lance bit back the rest of his ramble as Shiro closed his eyes. Shit. _Shit_. So much for a calm and eloquent explanation. Shiro couldn’t even look at him now. Okay. Okay. Lance drew in a breath. He could fix this. He could. He could restore Shiro’s faith in him as a mostly sane human being.

Shiro lifted a hand and pinched the bridge of his nose.

Then again maybe not.

Grimacing, Lance opened his mouth, shut it, opened it again, only to shut it once more, no words coming to mind that sounded even remotely good. He stared at Shiro, hopeless and beyond lost, on the brink of declaring this whole thing to be an elaborate practical joke when Shiro doubled over, both hands clutching at his head.

“Shiro!” Lance rushed toward him, his heart pounding in his chest. “Are you all-”

The question went unfinished, Shiro whipping up then and striking Lance hard in the chest. The force of the blow sent him sailing across the training room. His bayard and helmet fell from his hands. He crashed hard onto the floor, losing the little wind he had left from the impact. Gasping, Lance clutched at his chest. In the distance, through his tears, he saw Shiro approach. He wanted to move, he wanted to run, but all he could do was stare, both his body and mind frozen by the sight of Shiro drawing closer, his left arm glowing, the same searing purple that shone from his eyes.

There was a swoosh, a pained pant of breath. There was Shiro drawing closer. There was a long moment in which Lance gazed up, his chest searing, tears streaming from his eyes, at the man he had once idolized. Then Shiro moved, leaping into the air, his arm raised and poised to strike.

The strike struck, but not on Lance, Keith sliding between them at the last second to block the blow with his sword. The force of the swing pushed him nearly to his knees, but Lance watched, awestruck, as, a second later, Keith started to push up and drive Shiro back. “Shiro… What are you doing?”

Hand still on his chest, Lance eased to his feet. “I don’t… Not… Shiro…”

Shiro, or whoever he was, glanced from Keith to Lance. His eyes and arm cast an eldritch glow upon his face. “Perceptive boy. Too perceptive.”

“Who are you?” Keith demanded. “Where’s Shiro?”

Shiro didn’t respond. At least not verbally. He twisted his arm and grabbed Keith’s sword, then hurled it and Keith across the room. Whipping back around, he made to attack Lance again, but Lance called his bayard to hand and blocked the blow, as Keith had, with his sword.

Shiro froze, his eyes widening as he took in the Altean blade.

Lance allowed himself the smallest of smirks. “Yeah, I know. I’m just full of surprises.”

He heaved with all his might, causing Shiro to stumble back. Lance pressed the small advantage, his movements clumsier with the unfamiliar weapon. Shiro quickly found an opening, aiming a high kick at Lance’s shoulder that sent him stumbling, but Keith was there before Shiro could follow up, diving between them again. All Lance could do for a moment was gawk, Keith better at fighting now than when he left, fast and fierce and fluid in his movements. He knocked Shiro back, again and again, but Shiro dodged the third strike, darting to the side to strike at Keith. But before he could capitalize, Lance changed his sword to his gun and unleashed a spray of fire that forced Shiro to dodge again, this time away from Keith.

Together they drove Shiro back, Lance firing from the left, unsettling Shiro as Keith fought him from the right. The back wall of the training room loomed. Shiro stopped a few feet from it, his body still poised to fight. His eyes darted between Keith and Lance and back again.

“Surrender,” Lance said as he drew closer, “and we won’t harm you.”

“Where’s Shiro?” Keith demanded again. “What have you done to him?”

A few seconds passed in which Shiro looked at them, contemplating, assessing, searching for a way to regain the edge. Or to escape, Keith and Lance standing between Shiro and the exit. His gaze landed on Lance, where it stayed. Lance clenched his jaw. Did Shiro think he could reach Lance without Lance shooting him? Or did he think he could withstand the shots until he got in close? Heart pounding, Lance drew in a careful breath. He reaffirmed his hold on his gun and his aim on Shiro. Whichever the case, he wouldn’t go down without a fight.

Shiro shifted his weight, turning toward Lance, but once more Keith stepped between them and shook his head. “Don’t.”

Shiro didn’t. Instead he smiled. “Sentimental fool.” He raised his fist then, pointing it directly at Keith and Lance. In the next second, dark energy swirled and collected around it like a hurricane. At the sight of it, Lance dropped his bayard and reached for Keith. He grabbed him as Shiro fired and the two tumbled to the floor, the energy blasting over their heads, so close their hair whipped and the air sizzled around them. The blast hit the front wall like a thunderclap, echoing so loudly that Lance winced. Keith tensed to leap back to his feet, but another blast zoomed past them, this time from the opposite direction, Shiro using the opening to make his escape. Transforming his gun to his shield, Lance blocked the next barrage. The energy ricocheted off the shield. Muscles trembling, Lance endured the assault until, suddenly, it ceased. 

Instantly, Keith peeked around the shield. A second later, he sprang to his feet. “Come on!” he yelled as he hauled Lance after him. “We can’t let him get away!”

Keith took off for the training room door. Lance spared a second to collect his helmet, sliding it on as he sprinted after him. By the time Lance reached him, he was already in the hall, looking from one empty end to the other, not-Shiro nowhere in sight.

Lance transformed his shield back to his gun before activating his comm. “Allura! Allura, come in!”

A couple seconds later she came onto the line. “What is it, Lance? I’m a tad busy.”

“Shiro just tried to kill me and Keith.”

The silence that sounded after his pronouncement was so absolute that, for a second, Lance was certain he’d somehow lost the connection. Then Allura sighed. “Lance, I know you’ve had your disagreements with him-”

“I’m serious. Shiro- or whoever he is, whoever’s controlling him- because,” he said as he looked at Keith, “it’s always mind control, can do magic. Like dark, swirly, murderous magic.”

“What?”

Lance felt a twinge of guilt for bulldozering past her bewilderment, but he didn’t have time to explain. “Are you in the control room? Or close to it?”

“No. I’m in the kitchen, helping Coran. Why? Lance, what is going on?”

“I told you. Shiro tried to kill us and then he ran. We don’t know where he went.” Lance looked once more at Keith, who had his own helmet up and was, presumably, informing Krolia about the situation. “Any thoughts on where?”

Keith inspected both ends of the hall. “He can’t fight all of us, even with this magic, so he’s got to either get control of the ship and use it against us, or-”

“Black! He’s going for Black!”

Keith’s head whipped back toward him. He sucked in a sharp breath.

“Come on,” Lance said. He took off down the hall, in the opposite direction of the control room. He waited for Keith to say something, to correct his mistake or question why this way, but Keith didn’t do either. He ran beside Lance, either understanding what Lance intended or trusting him enough to follow. If Lance had the time, he knew he would freak out about this. Later, he likely would. But now Lance ran beside Keith, and in the distance, waiting for them, the buzz building in the back of Lance’s brain, Red roared. 

*

**Author's Note:**

> Feel free to follow me [on Tumblr](http://astreetcarnamedwynn.tumblr.com) if you're so inclined.


End file.
